This resolution provides for the consideration of H.R. 77, which establishes a process for the en bloc disapproval of "midnight rules" issued at the end of a presidential administration.
Michelle Fischbach
Representative
MN-7
This resolution establishes the procedural framework for the House of Representatives to consider H.R. 77, which aims to streamline the process for disapproving "midnight rules" issued at the end of a presidential administration. It sets specific parameters for debate and limits further amendments to ensure an efficient legislative review.
| Party | Total Votes | Yes | No | Did Not Vote |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Republican | 218 | 216 | 0 | 2 |
Democrat | 215 | 0 | 205 | 10 |
House Moves to Fast-Track Reversals of 'Midnight Rules' with New Procedural Bill
When a president is on their way out the door, there is often a flurry of new regulations signed into law—what policy wonks call 'midnight rules.' This resolution changes the playbook for how the House of Representatives can kill those rules off. Specifically, it paves the way for H.R. 77, a bill that would allow Congress to group these regulations together and vote them down 'en bloc' (all at once) rather than one by one. To make this happen fast, the resolution waives all 'points of order'—basically the legislative version of a 'technical foul'—and limits debate to just one hour. This means the House can bypass the usual slow-motion bureaucracy to wipe a previous administration’s late-term work off the books in a single afternoon.
The Fast Pass to Deregulation
By allowing 'en bloc' consideration, this bill turns a surgical process into a sledgehammer. Imagine a small business owner who spent months adjusting their payroll systems to comply with a new end-of-year labor regulation. Under current rules, Congress would typically have to debate that specific rule's merits. With this change, that labor rule could be bundled with fifty other unrelated environmental or banking regulations and scrapped in one vote. While this is great for cutting red tape quickly, it means specific, nuanced rules might get tossed out with the bathwater without a dedicated hearing on why they were put there in the first place.
Efficiency vs. Oversight
The real-world impact here is all about speed and power. The resolution is written to be 'bulletproof' against delays; it treats the bill as having been read and blocks any new amendments from being added (Section 1). For a busy person, this looks like efficiency, but it also means your representative has almost no chance to tweak the bill or argue for a specific regulation that might be helping your local community. If you’re a worker who recently gained new safety protections from a late-term rule, those protections could vanish in a bundle vote before the public even realizes the debate has started.
A New Standard for Power Shifts
This isn't just about the current administration; it’s a tool for every future change in power. By waiving the usual procedural hurdles, the House is essentially giving the majority party a 'clear-all' button for the previous president's final acts. The challenge is that 'midnight rules' often include non-controversial updates to technical standards alongside the big political swings. Because this resolution limits debate to sixty minutes, equally divided between parties, there is very little time to sift through the pile. It sets a precedent where the regulatory landscape can shift overnight, making it harder for businesses and families to plan for the long term when the rules of the game can be deleted in bulk.