This Act mandates a systematic, periodic review of all existing federal regulations while imposing strict conditions and trade-offs for issuing new or amended rules during a specified period.
James Risch
Senator
ID
The Zero Based Regulations Act mandates a systematic, ongoing review of all existing federal regulations to ensure they remain effective and cost-efficient. This process requires agencies to repeal rules before review and subject any reinstated rule to strict cost limitations and public hearings. Furthermore, the Act temporarily restricts the creation of new rules unless they reduce the overall regulatory burden or address critical public safety needs.
Zero-Based Regulations Act Mandates Annual Review and Temporary Repeal of 20% of Federal Rules
The Zero Based Regulations Act is an aggressive push to overhaul the entire federal regulatory system. In short, it forces federal agencies to put every single existing rule and regulation on a mandatory, recurring review cycle. The goal is to make sure regulations are still effective, but the method is what will catch most people’s attention.
The Zero-Based Mandate: Repeal Before Review
This bill sets up a high-stakes, rotating schedule for every federal agency to review its rules. The Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has to publish a schedule every year ensuring that roughly 20 percent of an agency’s total regulations are reviewed annually (SEC. 3).
Here’s the kicker: Before an agency can even begin the deep dive analysis on a rule, they have to repeal that part of the Code of Federal Regulations (SEC. 3(b)). Think of it like this: the speed limit sign comes down before the city council decides if the speed limit should still be 35 MPH. This creates an immediate regulatory gap. For people relying on rules—say, specific air quality standards or safety requirements for construction sites—that protection is legally on hold while the agency conducts its “retrospective analysis.”
The New Standard for Keeping a Rule
When reviewing a rule, the agency must perform a detailed analysis to answer three key questions: Is the rule actually achieving the goals Congress set? Do the benefits of the rule still justify the costs? And is there a less restrictive way to achieve the same goals? OIRA is tasked with creating the standardized forms for this analysis, centralizing control over how every agency measures success (SEC. 3(d)).
If an agency wants to bring back a rule that was temporarily repealed, they can’t just flip the switch. They have to go through the full, formal process of proposing a new rule. Crucially, the reinstated rule cannot cost more than 70 percent of what the original, repealed version was estimated to cost (SEC. 3(e)). This means that even if a regulation was deemed necessary—say, a specific safety requirement for manufacturing—the new version must be cheaper to implement, which could force agencies to adopt weaker standards to meet the cost cap.
The Regulatory Pause Button
For a temporary period—from the bill’s enactment until the end of that fiscal year—creating new rules becomes extremely difficult. An agency can only issue a new rule if it meets narrow exceptions, such as addressing a serious public health threat or complying with a court order. Even then, the agency must follow a “trade-off rule”: if they introduce a new or changed rule, they must also repeal or significantly simplify at least one existing rule (SEC. 5). The idea is that the overall regulatory burden must decrease, not increase. This temporary pause could be a serious roadblock for agencies needing to respond quickly to emerging issues, unless the President steps in to waive the requirements entirely.