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/