The 'Better Straws Act' Turns Presidential Order Into Permanent Federal Law

The newly proposed “Better Straws Act” is starting off with a procedural move that’s pretty common in Washington, but still important for anyone who cares about regulatory stability. Section 2 of this bill, titled "Codification of Executive order 14208," takes a previous action by the President—Executive Order 14208—and converts it directly into a permanent federal statute.

The Fine Print of Permanence

Think of this like upgrading a handshake deal to a signed contract. An Executive Order (EO) is powerful, but it’s essentially an instruction from the President to the federal agencies, and a future President can scrap it with the stroke of a pen. By codifying EO 14208, Congress is saying, “Nope, this isn’t just a temporary instruction anymore; it’s the law of the land.” This means that whatever rules, requirements, or directives were laid out in that order are now baked into the federal code, requiring a full act of Congress to change or repeal them. For federal agencies, this provides stability, making the rules they enforce more permanent and harder to undo quickly.

Why This Matters When We Don’t Know What’s Inside

Here’s the catch for the average person: the text of the “Better Straws Act” doesn’t actually tell us what Executive Order 14208 does. We only know that it’s being made permanent. If that EO dealt with, say, new environmental standards for manufacturing, then those rules just got a lot more stable, which could be good news for companies that invested early in compliance. Conversely, if the EO imposed new reporting burdens or costs on small businesses—maybe certain types of packaging regulations—then those burdens just became much harder to get rid of. The impact hinges entirely on the content of the original EO, which is currently a black box in this bill text. For busy people, the takeaway is simple: a temporary rule just became a permanent policy, and whether that’s good or bad depends entirely on what the rule is.