Make Congress Vote on Every Major Rule, and Watch Accountability Return

Ask a member of Congress who is responsible for a regulation that costs the economy a hundred million dollars a year, and watch the performance. First comes the sigh. Then the passive voice: "The agency has decided." Then a mention of the statute, which was passed years ago by someone else. Nobody in the building did it. It simply happened, like weather.

That is the sound of accountability leaving a republic. A bill called the REINS Act proposes to bring it back with a rule so simple that its critics have to argue against the idea that elected officials should be responsible for the laws. Let me explain the bill, show why it is constitutional, and answer the one objection that deserves an answer.

The name and the idea

REINS stands for Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny. The acronym is a pun on a horse's reins, and the pun is the point: the legislature is supposed to hold them. The bill was first introduced in the House in October 2009, and it has returned in later Congresses since. The idea fits in one sentence. No major rule may take effect until Congress approves it by a joint resolution that the President signs.

That is the entire design. The details that make it work are these.

• Major rules only. The bill uses the same definition that the Congressional Review Act uses: a rule the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs finds will have an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more, or cause a major increase in costs or prices for consumers, industries, governments or regions, or have significant adverse effects on competition, employment, investment, productivity, innovation or the ability of American firms to compete with foreign firms. Most of what agencies publish is not major. In a year when the Federal Register carries 2,441 final rules, as it did in 2025, only a small fraction would clear the threshold.
• A joint resolution of approval. The agency submits the rule and a report to Congress. A resolution approving it is introduced, and the rule cannot take effect unless that resolution becomes law. The bill sets a time limit of about 70 legislative days for Congress to act, with an expedited procedure in the Senate so the resolution cannot be bottled up by a single member. If Congress does not act within the window, the rule does not take effect.
• An emergency valve. The President may determine that a major rule is needed for an imminent threat to health or safety, or for national security, or to enforce criminal law or a trade agreement, and the rule can take effect for a limited period (90 days in the version I checked) without waiting. This addresses a real concern, and it answers the objection that the bill would paralyze the government in a crisis.

That is not a repeal of a single regulation. It is a requirement that the biggest ones go through the front door.

The House keeps passing it

The bill's history is a small civics lesson. The House of Representatives passed REINS in the 112th Congress, in December 2011. It passed it again in the 113th Congress, in 2013, and in the 114th, in 2015, and in the 115th, in early 2017. Each time the bill went to the Senate, and each time it died there, because the Senate's rules allow a minority to block a bill that cannot get 60 votes to end debate. Even in 2017, when one party held the House, the Senate and the White House, the bill did not become law.

That is worth pausing on. It shows how hard it is to give a legislature back its own powers. The people best placed to write a bill like this are the people who would have to cast the votes it requires. Every lawmaker who wrote a vague statute and let an agency fill in the details enjoys deniability. REINS takes the deniability away, and deniability is a comfortable thing.

What the Constitution says

Now the part that decides everything. Article I, Section 1 says: "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives." Article I, Section 7 sets out how a bill becomes law: it passes the House and the Senate, and a bill must, "before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States." If the President signs, it is law. If he vetoes, two-thirds of each chamber can override.

Those two sections are the reason the Supreme Court decided INS v. Chadha as it did in 1983. Congress had written a law letting one house cancel an immigration decision. The Court held that a one-house veto was legislative in character, so it had to meet the Constitution's requirements of bicameralism (both chambers) and presentment (the President's signature or veto). The full story is in INS v. Chadha Killed the Legislative Veto and Left Congress Fewer Tools.

A critic might say REINS is just a legislative veto in disguise. It is the opposite. A joint resolution of approval passes both houses and goes to the President. It does exactly what Chadha demands. The decision did not forbid Congress from deciding what becomes law. It forbade Congress from shortcutting the Constitution's procedures. REINS uses the procedures. The statute that sets it up is ordinary legislation, passed through the ordinary channel, and enforcing it breaks no constitutional rule.

So the bill is not a constitutional gamble. It puts the structure back the way Article I drew it: the people's elected representatives write the laws that bind the people, and the executive carries them out. The Federalist explains why this matters. In No. 47, Madison writes that "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." An agency that writes a major rule, enforces it and adjudicates disputes about it holds all three. The argument is developed in Madison Called It the Very Definition of Tyranny, and Agencies Hold All Three.

The argument, in numbered premises

I'll lay it out the way a good brief does.

1. Binding rules should carry an elected name. A free people is governed by laws made by representatives it can remove. A rule written by an official the voters did not choose, who cannot be removed by them, is not a law the people made.
2. Major rules are the ones that matter. A rule that moves $100 million a year in the economy is bigger than most statutes Congress ever passes. It deserves a vote.
3. Delegation without a vote lets everyone off the hook. Congress can claim credit for a broad goal and blame the agency for the pain. The agency can claim it was following the statute. The voter finds nobody to blame.
4. A vote restores the chain. If a rule needs approval, a member who votes yes owns it, and a member who votes no can explain why. Either way, the voter has a name to put on the outcome.
5. The mechanism is constitutional. A joint resolution satisfies bicameralism and presentment and so respects Chadha.

Premise four is the heart of it. The Founders did not expect legislators to be wise. They expected them to be answerable. A member who must cast a recorded vote on a rule that closes factories or raises electricity bills will think harder about it than a member who merely voted for a vague grant of power a decade ago.

The steelman: Congress is too slow

The objection I take most seriously goes like this. Congress cannot even pass a budget on time. How will it approve dozens of major rules a year? The calendar is full. The Senate's rules make passing anything a trial. If the bill became law, the result would be that useful rules, such as safety standards and sensible updates, would stall in the Senate, and the economy would lose the benefits.

This is a serious objection, and I will not pretend it is silly. Congress is slow. The floor time is scarce.

But look at what the objection actually says. It says the legislature cannot manage to consider the biggest rules governing the country, so they must be written by people who are not accountable to the voters. Stated that way, it is an argument for an administrative government, not against REINS. If Congress lacks the time to decide the questions that matter most, the fix is to give Congress the time, not to give the questions to someone else.

There are also three practical answers.

Volume. The bill applies only to major rules. In a year with thousands of final rules, the great majority would never come to Congress. The ones that would come are precisely the rules large enough to deserve floor time.

Scarcity improves quality. When Congress knows that a major rule requires a vote, it will write statutes with more care. A legislature that has to vote on the consequences has a reason to specify the policy in the first place, rather than writing a statute that says "the Secretary shall make rules in the public interest." The bill is a pressure on drafters, and pressure is what they need.

The default can be changed. Critics fear that rules will stall for lack of a vote. That is the correct result if Congress does not want them. If a rule is good, a majority can pass it, and in the Senate, the expedited procedure in the bill is designed to keep a minority from killing it by delay. A rule that cannot win a majority of elected representatives is a rule that lacks consent.

Some also argue that inaction is a policy choice with costs: a stalled safety rule means preventable harm. That is true of every statute, too. We do not conclude that Congress should stop passing laws or that every judgment should be handed to a commission. We conclude that decisions about costs and benefits on a national scale belong to officials who answer for them.

The other objection: "This just helps the party out of power"

Some will say REINS is a partisan weapon. Notice something: the bill is symmetrical. It applies to any administration's rules. Congress controlled by a party opposing the President would use it to stop rules, and a Congress that agrees with the President would approve them. There is no ideological thumb on the scale. It would also bind a conservative administration's rules. I would rather defend a principle that cuts against my side's rules than a loophole that happens to favor them.

A related concern: the bill would make it harder to undo a regulation, since that, too, would need congressional action. The bill covers new major rules; repeals of rules are handled by ordinary means, and the executive can still decline to enforce. That is an issue to be debated in committee, and a supporter should be honest that it may need tuning.

The Founders and the machinery

Return to the text. The Constitution contains the sentence that is relevant to every argument in this post: Article II, Section 3, which tells the President that "he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." Laws. The President executes what Congress enacts. When agencies write rules with the force of law, the line between executing the law and making it has blurred, and the voters pay the price. A republic needs that line. Tocqueville, Madison, Hamilton and every other thinker who shaped the Founding believed it.

The Founders were not naive about legislators. Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51 that "ambition must be made to counteract ambition." REINS applies that idea inside the legislature: it makes members' desire to avoid blame work for the voters, since they cannot avoid it when they must vote.

How REINS fits the larger toolkit

REINS is one of several tools, and they work together. The The Congressional Review Act Lets Congress Veto a Rule, if It Moves in Time is the fast lane Congress already has, but it works only after the fact, and only with a President's signature. The Nondelegation Doctrine Says Congress Cannot Hand Its Job to Someone Else is the constitutional argument that Congress must supply an "intelligible principle" when it delegates. Five Times the Court Told an Agency That Big Questions Belong to Congress shows the Court moving in the same direction. And A Regulatory Budget Would Make Washington Count the Cost of Its Rules describes a way to measure the cost of what agencies do. None of these alone is enough. Together they restore a rule that sounds old-fashioned because it is: the people who make the law should be the people who answer for it.

You can follow the House and Senate's work on these questions through the Congress page and see how your own representatives vote on regulatory bills at the scorecard.

The case in brief

1. The REINS Act would require a joint resolution of approval, passed by both chambers and signed by the President, before any major rule, defined as one with an annual economic effect of $100 million or more, can take effect.
2. The House passed versions of the bill in 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017, and it did not become law, which shows how reluctant legislators are to take back responsibility.
3. The bill respects INS v. Chadha because it works through bicameralism and presentment, and it restores the Article I structure in which elected representatives make binding law.
4. The strongest objection, that Congress is too slow, proves too much: if Congress cannot handle the biggest rules, the answer is to give it the time, and the bill's limit to major rules and its emergency valve keep the workload manageable.
5. A recorded vote puts a name on every major rule, which is the whole purpose of representative government.

What you can do: look up your representative's and senators' votes on regulatory reform bills on Congress.gov, then write each a short letter asking whether he or she will cosponsor the REINS Act and vote for it.