President-elect Trump has promised that he will repeal many of the regulations issued by his predecessor and that this will help foster higher economic growth. The reality is more complex: without new legislation, he will find it difficult to roll back much of President Obama’s regulatory handiwork. Even with the necessary legislation, there may be relatively little savings from such a roll-back. What Trump should be able to do is stop the implementation of rules issued in the waning months of Obama’s term and work with Congress to identify and fix other problematic regulations.

The process / The Congressional Review Act (CRA) allows Congress, with the signature of the president (the important part), to repeal a regulation under expedited procedure in the House and Senate. The CRA has only been used successfully once, however, largely because instances of one party owning large congressional majorities and the White House are rare. (See “Do Presidents Rush Rules to Avoid the Congressional Review Act?” Fall 2016.)

The only successful CRA vote was in 2001, with the Department of Labor’s ergonomics rule. A rare confluence of circumstances generated this successful repeal: an incoming Republican president who (like Trump) had promised to cut regulations, a Republican House and Senate majority (albeit narrow), and a regulation that was well-known, controversial, and issued in the waning days of the previous administration.

That rare combination returns in January 2017 with Trump, who pledged to repeal up to 70% of previous regulations, and a Republican majority in both chambers, many of whom also promised voters that they would do something about onerous regulations that are costing U.S. jobs. Republicans have spent the last few years laying the groundwork for comprehensive regulatory reform, from how courts grant deference to agencies to the role of congressional oversight and the practice of cost-benefit analysis.

Using the CRA might make sense, but if Congress has a large list of rules it wants to repeal then even using expedited procedures could consume valuable floor and committee time. Enter H.R. 5982, the Midnight Rule Relief Act, proposed legislation that would amend the CRA to allow joint resolutions of disapproval en bloc. This would permit the new Congress to review every rule finalized in the last 60 legislative or session days of the 2016 term, which would cover roughly the last six months of 2016. If the bill passes, then these rules would be generally stricken until Congress in essence redelegates the rulemaking power to agencies.

The rules / If Congress does pass the Midnight Rule Relief Act and it is signed into law, what rules would Congress consider repealing? The first one many conservatives want to target is the Clean Power Plan, President Obama’s signature climate change rule. But because it was finalized in 2015, it is ineligible for review under CRA procedure. Thus, to undo the rule would require either a series of appropriations riders or the new administration following the Administrative Procedure Act to formally repeal the regulation.

There are a host of other notable and controversial regulations that many in Congress would like to address. Because the eligible period under the CRA stretches from sometime in May to the end of President Obama’s term, the total universe of rules is close to 200. Here are some of the largest rules issued since May that could be repealed, along with their total estimated costs:

  • Phase 2 Greenhouse Gas Standards for Trucks, $29.3 billion
  • Overtime Rule, $2.9 billion
  • Aviation Drone Rules, $2.5 billion
  • Drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf, $2 billion
  • Disclosure of Payments by Resource Extraction Issuers, $1.2 billion
  • Fracking Emissions Standards, $890 million
  • Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces, $872 million
  • Treatment of Certain Interests in Corporations, $280 million

Combined, these rules will impose more than $5 billion in annual economic costs and 8.5 million paperwork burden hours. That $5 billion figure wouldn’t get Trump anywhere near his 70% goal (depending on his denominator), but it would represent a rolling-back of regulatory activity and would doubtless please many of his supporters in the transportation, energy, and labor sectors. In addition to those rules, Congress could scrutinize new efficiency standards for refrigerators, which promise to raise prices for consumers.

Just out of the CRA’s grasp is the Department of Labor’s Fiduciary Rule, which will impose more than $31 billion in cumulative costs. The administration was wise to transmit that rule to Congress as soon as it was published in the Federal Register. It did the same with the Overtime rule, which may not be eligible for repeal depending on how many days Congress meets in December. Sometimes the delay in publication and transmission can take months.

There are at least five final rules awaiting formal publication that President Obama is planning to release before leaving office, all of which are related to energy and the environment and likely to pique the interest of Congress. For example, final rules governing natural gas production on public lands could cost more than $1.4 billion. The newest version of the Renewable Fuels Standard and the “Stream Protection” rule for the coal industry are also pending. Combined, these rules are estimated to cost $2.2 billion and generate 2.5 million new paperwork burden hours.

There are other rules not subject to CRA that Congress and the next administration may want to review separately. If they decide to go after the Affordable Care Act’s most significant regulations, there will be plenty of targets: subsidies and regulations establishing federal exchanges, the de facto banning of Health Savings Accounts, and the Essential Health Benefits rules would likely be altered, for instance, and the regulations leading to standardized health plans—which Republicans have complained limit choice and drive up insurance costs—will also be ripe for review in any Affordable Care Act reform.

Limits to benefits from repeal / While Republicans may lament that the CRA only applies to the last few months of an administration, that may be for the best. While reaching further back might score some political points, repealing rules that have already been implemented for some time will have a negligible economic effect and may not pass a cost-benefit analysis. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency implemented the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards in 2012, and despite some legal setbacks in the courts, it has largely resulted in coal power plants shutting down or switching to natural gas. The seismic changes in the energy world—especially the shift to natural gas–fired generation—mean that these power plants will likely never operate again. Similarly, the Volcker Rule might be a credible candidate for repeal, but many financial institutions began winding down their proprietary trading desks as soon as Dodd-Frank passed and would not be reconstituted soon regardless of the applicable rules.

It is important to realize that repealing a few past rules won’t affect economic growth or boost employment. Generally, a piecemeal deregulatory approach is hardly ideal, considering how little one rule affects the national economy and how easily future administrations can re-propose measures. It would be far better for the new administration to contemplate broader procedural reform to provide for a lasting solution to regulatory accumulation. However, the Midnight Rule Relief Act would allow Congress to bundle dozens of major regulations, with billions of dollars in annual costs, and undo the final gasps of a presidency.

Few would dispute that the regulatory state imposes compliance burdens on U.S. businesses that total somewhere near $1 trillion, but significantly reducing that burden is a difficult task. While President-elect Trump promised to repeal 70% of all regulations, the near-term reality is that the best he could do would be to repeal a mere handful of recent regulations and save the economy $5 billion in annual compliance costs. However, such a step could prove to be the first big leap in a series of reforms that conservatives and libertarians have sought for decades that would change how our government issues and implements federal regulations.