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The team making sure we never have anything nice again. Trump, Ryan, and McConnell.

It took the current crop of Republicans to realize the destructive intent Newt Gingrich had for American government. Back in 1996, when he was speaker of the House, Gingrichgot the Congressional Review Act passed. This law gives Congress the chance to undo anyregulation finalized in the last 60 legislative days. It also means the rules can never be reinstated, unless Congress writes the the undone regulation into new law.It gives a whole new perspective on the do-nothing Congress of last year. By hardly ever showing up to work, they extended their 60-day legislative window dramatically. The law had been used once, in the brand-new George W. Bush administration to undo worker-safety regulations meant to reduce repetitive motion injuries. It took the Trump/Ryan/McConnell triumvirate, however, to fully detonate this time-bomb.

What makes passing a disapproval resolution under the CRA so easy is that you only need a simple majority to do it, meaning Democrats in the Senate cant use a filibuster to stop it. []

In the first few weeks of the Trump administration, Congress has passed CRAs undoing a Social Security Administration rule meant to keep mentally ill people from buying guns, and a Securities and Exchange Commission rule requiring oil, gas and mining companies to disclose their payments to foreign governments. []

Environmental advocates have been some of the loudest opponents the CRA. Republicans have already targeted three Interior Department regulations; Trump signed a bill undoing regulations to protect waterways from from coal mining operations on Thursday. Two other bills targeting rules from the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management are expected to come up for a vote in the Senate when lawmakers return on Feb. 27.

The rules being tossed out now go far beyond worker safety to everyone's safety. Guns for the mentally ill! Poisoned water for everyone! It's putting agencies in something of a bind, since there has never been judicial review of the CRA, because it's only been used one, and there's no case law guiding how agencies are supposed to proceed when told by Congress to undo everything they've been putting into place on these rules. Take for example that SEC rulethe Dodd-Frank financial reform law requires that these companies provide the disclosure of payments to foreign governments to regulators. That's in the law, not just in the regulation, so there's now a conflict between the statute and this instruction to the SEC.

Celine McNicholas, labor counsel for the Economic Policy Institute, sums it up: Were in uncharted territory here, she said. Here and everywhere.

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The Newt Gingrich time bomb Republicans are using to destroy everything good - Daily Kos