The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the “Chevron deference,” which gave bureaucratic agencies enormous power to determine how to implement laws, has been widely celebrated by conservatives as a blow against federal regulatory overreach. But unless Congress reasserts its primacy in regulatory policy, the end of Chevron may simply shift the most important economic decisions from unelected bureaucrats to unelected judges.
The best solution is the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act, which requires affirmative approval in Congress for any economically significant regulation before it can take effect. This bill has passed the House half a dozen times, including twice in the current Congress, once standalone and once as part of the House’s first proposed debt ceiling legislation, but it has never moved forward in the Senate. Senate candidates should promise to change that.
