Deregulation deferred—not defeated—by the Big Beautiful Bill

In my latest Forbes column, I detail how the House-passed “One Big Beautiful Bill” (BBB) had the potential to revolutionize federal regulatory policy. But last-minute changes in the House stripped away provisions that could have both pruned existing rules and reshaped how regulations are made and managed henceforth. The Senate now takes up the BBB.

The original BBB featured reforms that would have strengthened Congress’s oversight of costly rules, particularly through tweaks to the Congressional Review Act (CRA). These changes would have enhanced disclosures about individual rules, and incorporated elements from the long-proposed Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act to secure congressional accountability over rulemaking.

Instead of simply allowing Congress to disapprove of notice-and-comment rules after enactment as the CRA now does, the original BBB aimed to require legislative approval for certain “major” rules—specifically those that increase government revenue (the BBB, after all, is a budget bill). This potentially could have added a powerful check on agencies imposing fees and penalties (with caveats, however; there was some nagging potential for progressives to exploit the change).

Another provision called for a comprehensive five-year sunset review of existing rules, such that rules would expire without Congress explicitly approving their continuance. The BBB also proposed addressing the so-called midnight rules concerns. Presidents tend to rush through rules in the final days of their terms; the BBB would have addressed that by allowing Congress to bundle such rules for disapproval.

Additionally, the bill directed the Government Accountability Office to perform a comprehensive estimate of regulatory costs.

Unfortunately, given the prospect of Senate procedural hurdles, these reforms were quietly dropped just prior to the BBB’s passage with single-line deletion.

However, as I noted in Forbes, hope isn’t lost. The final BBB incorporated a $100 million funding boost for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) through 2028, earmarked to “improve regulatory processes and analyze and review rules” issued by several federal agencies. While the explicit congressional approvals, sunset mechanisms, and other innovations originally envisioned are now gone, this infusion still gives OMB an opportunity to streamline and modernize regulatory review.

Senate lawmakers now have a chance to reformat the foregoing provisions to avoid parliamentary fatality. Given the fusion of spending and regulation in modern America, bills like the BBB should increasingly tackle not just fiscal matters but also incorporate the overt and hidden costs of regulatory burdens. Proposals like a regulatory budget to cap the overall cost of new regulations could complement spending reforms and unleash economic growth—and may also be a better fit as far as parliamentary concerns go.

It’s been more than two decades since major regulatory reforms were enacted. The Senate now has the BBB, and with it the chance to ensure we don’t wait another 20 years.

For more, see: “How The Big Beautiful Budget Bill Can Deliver Decisive Deregulation,” Forbes