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Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, Congress writes the Nation's laws, and the executive branch sticks to enforcing them. That idea is actually not new. It is written plainly into our article I powers right in the Constitution. But half a century of ceding legislative authority to an unelected bureaucracy has thrown this balance off-kilter.

Earlier this year, of course, the article III branch quite clearly restored the boundaries on freelance regulatory interpretation in the executive branch. But there is more work to be done to rein in Washington bureaucrats' expansive interpretation of their powers over working Americans, and fortunately Congress has a powerful tool called the Congressional Review Act that does exactly that.

To great effect, Senate Republicans used the CRA to scrap a slew of bureaucratic rules after 8 years of runaway regulation under the Obama administration. Republicans worked to end a coal-mining rule that threatened hundreds of thousands of workers, including many in Kentucky. We took a hammer to a pair of far-reaching and aggressive Obama-era education rules, and we dramatically scaled back DC bureaucrats' control of lands that should be managed with local input.

Between 2017 and 2018, Republicans used the CRA 16 times to impose an ambitious regulatory housecleaning that gave farmers and miners, landowners and job creators, small businesses and builders the certainty and confidence to stay producing on American soil.

We did all of this with hardly any Democratic support. So it is not surprising that, under the Biden administration, Democrats have worked relentlessly to resurrect the Obama administration's regulatory regime, from student loan socialism to job-killing energy policies, to blatant infringements on property rights. Literally, on day one, President Biden signed an Executive order that began tearing down the regulatory certainty that Republicans had restored.

Now, with just over a month left in the year, the Biden administration's 2024 regulations alone amount to the second highest annual total by pages in the Federal Register. On the whole, President Biden's agenda has imposed regulatory costs that, by one estimate, surpass $1.8 trillion. That is trillion with a ``t.''

So it is safe to say Congress once again has an opportunity. Two weeks ago, the American people gave Republicans a legitimate, crystal- clear mandate, and come January we ought to use it to hit the brakes on runaway regulation.

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