Senate Democrats Have Been Handed a Tool to Stop the Big Beautiful Bill

[justaprogressive]

t’s refreshing in a way that we no longer have to spend much time thinking about the Senate parliamentarian, the shadowy figure whose rulings supposedly decide what the chamber can and cannot do. Republicans put that to bed last week by overruling the parliamentarian over whether a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution could nullify the Environmental Protection Agency’s waiver allowing California to set its own air pollution standards on vehicles.

California was given authority in a carve-out to the Clean Air Act in 1970 to set higher emissions standards than the national rules, with the EPA subsequently granting waivers more than 100 times. The state was prepared to use its latest waiver to effectively ban gas-powered auto sales by 2035. But the Senate voted 51-to-44 last week to cancel that waiver, as well as two other waivers to tighten emission rules on diesel trucks and allow zero-emission trucks on the road. The House had already voted for the resolution, so it can now be signed by President Trump.

Only executive branch agency rules can be overturned by a CRA resolution, and only within 60 legislative days after being presented to Congress, in an up-or-down vote that avoids the Senate filibuster. The Senate parliamentarian, joining the auditors at the Government Accountability Office, said that the EPA waivers were not “rules” as defined by the CRA, and therefore couldn’t be put into a resolution. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), in a communication he sent last Congress about these very EPA waivers, agreed that the “federal preemption waivers cannot be reviewed under the Congressional Review Act.”

Yet Senate Republicans said, “Tough, we’re doing it anyway.” And Lee voted with them.

California has already announced that it will sue to maintain its waiver, charging that the Senate had no authority to overturn it. But the Senate operates largely on precedent, and now that the parliamentarian has been disregarded on this point, virtually any action the executive branch takes could be construed as a rule, and therefore subject to fast-track congressional review.

https://prospect.org/politics/2025-05-28-senate-democrats-stop-big-beautiful-bill/

[BoRaGard]

1. Hmmmm?

"Democrats could subject the Senate to time-consuming resolution votes repeatedly, to such a degree that the Senate would not have time to do anything else for the rest of this session of Congress.

" In other words, Democrats could respond to the waiver vote by paralyzing the Senate, and stopping the giant Trump tax bill from ever reaching the floor."

[newdeal2]

2. Interesting, but we'll see if they're willing to use all available tools

A lot of the Senate seems stuck in the old ways of doing things. That worked until Republicans started disregarding precedent and the law.

[usonian]

3. Here's the action item, or inaction, if you like.

Georgia State University assistant professor and former House Oversight Committee staffer Todd Phillips laid this out in a Prospect piece earlier this month. Any 30 senators can force a CRA resolution onto the floor, with a required ten hours of debate time. These resolutions would need the president’s signature, and nearly all of them wouldn’t even get the Republican votes necessary to pass the Senate. But according to Senate procedure, they have to be dealt with if enough senators force them onto the floor. They must be debated and voted upon ahead of other Senate business if brought up for consideration. This means that Democrats can tie up the Senate floor for upwards of ten hours with any single CRA resolution.

Democrats could go back in time to invalidate prior agency actions.
The deregulatory Trump administration isn’t writing a whole lot of rules, limiting the raw material for these kinds of votes. But the Republican vote on EPA waivers just widely expanded the options for a CRA resolution. If the Department of Health and Human Services grants a state waiver for changes to its Medicaid program, or if the U.S. Department of Agriculture does the same for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Democrats could write resolutions to overturn such waivers. If the Federal Communications Commission issues a broadcast license, or the Justice Department approves a merger, or if the Securities and Exchange Commission decides to defer a prosecution in an investor protection case, Senate Democrats could challenge it. If the Department of Defense inks a contract for a new weapons system or any other item for procurement, they could challenge that, too. Any decision to redirect funds, change the terms of grants, or make practically any decision at all could, under the theory just enshrined into the Senate rulebook by Republicans, lead to a CRA resolution and ten hours of debate.

snip

The bottom line is this: If you found something like 1,000 current or former agency actions—a reasonable number considering all the work executive branch agencies do—you would probably have enough to keep the Senate debating and voting on CRA resolutions through the duration of this Congress.

That means the Senate would never have the ability to take up executive branch or judicial nominations, or legislation like the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that recently passed the House. Senate Democrats could put the chamber into permanent gridlock, and thereby save 14 million people from losing their Medicaid coverage, save millions more from loss of SNAP benefits, while also forcing the 2017 Trump tax cuts to expire. That’s the level of hardball that can be played here.

[JBTaurus83]

4. If we truly have a way of

paralyzing the senate, I say block nearly everything. If we "keep our powder dry" when we have options we are just shooting ourselves in the end.

[the_liberal_grandpa]

5. Are there 30 Democrats in the Senate willing to do this?

I would love it if they did but as someone else said they are content with doing things the old fashioned way (because the leadership is all OLD) so we will likely have to continue to fight with sternly worded letters instead.

[Hotler]

6. +1 ... Do they have the gumption? nt

[Wiz Imp]

7. It seems to me they are vastly overestimating how much Democrats can do with this.

Last edited Wed May 28, 2025, 12:15 PM - Edit history (1)

There's some instances that it can be done and slow things down a bit, but they provide no real evidence for what they're claiming. They're just giving their own interpretation of what that decision to ignore the parliamentarian last week means. Sorry, but I'm not buying it until somebody other than some random writer from The American Prospect agrees with the premise.

[lees1975]

8. When we had the power we wouldn't take steps like this.

Why does anyone think this will work now?

We held the power in our hands to overturn Citizens United, save Roe and overturn the immunity ruling, but wouldn't use it. In 2020, when we had both houses and the White House, we could have amended the judiciary act, added five liberal seats to the court and went to town. But we wouldn't.

These things look "too political".