As Republicans crafted their party-line megabill this summer, some conservative hard-liners hoped the legislation could be a vehicle for a long-sought rollback of agency rules.
But instead, the budget reconciliation megabill passed without any language from the “Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act,” which would dramatically expand congressional veto power over agency rules.
Now, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — chief sponsors of the deregulatory bill — say they want to get “REINS” over the finish line through any means necessary. Indeed, the House has included a version in fiscal 2026 spending legislation.
“There is not a singular cut that we could make that would mean as much as long-term regulatory reform,” Cammack said in an interview.
The “REINS Act” would give Congress final approval over major rules. Sponsors also want to make it easier to scrap existing agency rules.
The measure fits squarely within conservative government-shrinking priorities and has near universal support among the Republican conference.
But while “REINS” likely can pass the GOP-controlled House on its own — and did in 2023 — its chances of hitting 60 votes to overcome a Senate filibuster are slim.
That landscape ups the stakes for Republican sponsors to work the bill into a must-pass funding package or a reconciliation bill, the latter of which requires only a 51-vote majority in the Senate.
Yet a parliamentary scuffle that played out in final stages of the megabill fight indicates that conservatives face an uphill battle to get “REINS” done.
A reconciliation bust
Lee, who chairs the Energy and Natural Resources committee, made “REINS” a top priority of his during the reconciliation process. He hoped to rewrite the rule-busting language to ensure it complied with the Byrd rule, which dictates that everything in a reconciliation package be budgetary in nature.
But that effort ultimately fell short, with Lee being the only senator willing to bat for it. Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled against “budgetary REINS,” as Lee called his provision, despite Lee meeting with her and redrafting the legislation numerous times.
“We had many, many iterations, lots of back and forth, and it was looking favorable. We were getting favorable responses. And then, I believe it was on the day of the bipartisan Byrd bath that we ended up getting an adverse ruling,” Lee said.
According to Lee, President Donald Trump supported the inclusion of “REINS” in the reconciliation bill. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
But among his fellow senators, Lee was alone in pushing the measure. Some GOP Senators doubted from the beginning that it would ever be eligible for inclusion in the reconciliation bill.
Even Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who co-sponsors the stand-alone version of “REINS,” was not in Lee’s corner.
Paul chairs the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, which he confirmed to POLITICO’s E&E News has jurisdiction over “REINS.”
But he left the language out of his committee’s portion of the megabill. “It’s a policy, and it’s difficult to put policy into a budget resolution,” Paul said in an interview.
House action likely
Lee told POLITICO’s E&E News that he will attempt to fit the deregulatory language into a future reconciliation package — even if he has to continue to push for it alone on the Senate side.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he wants to do at least one, and potentially two, more reconciliation bills while Republicans have control of both chambers of Congress.
“I feel like, had we had more time, we could have worked out some of the bugs on [‘REINS’],” Lee said. “Even that adverse parliamentarian ruling is one that I think we could work through. That’s a potential option.”
On the House side, Cammack said she is preparing for “all sorts of contingencies” when it comes to “REINS.” Her next step is to put a standalone version of the bill on the House floor, where she predicts it will pass.
She is also incorporating “REINS” language into appropriations bills in the House. Johnson’s office did not respond to request for comment about the effort.
Neither of the appropriations bills passed by the House so far — Defense and Military Construction-VA — include language related to rulemaking authority.
But the Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill, released last week, includes language barring new rules that are deemed by the White House to cost over $100 million or pose “a major increase in costs or prices” for individuals, industries or government agencies.
In a news release, the House Appropriations Committee said that the Financial Services bill “codif[ies] the Regulations in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, which curbs unelected bureaucrats from having unfettered regulatory power.”
Although that language will likely pass the House, it may struggle to gain sufficient support in the Senate.
If it does get stripped out of the appropriations process, Cammack is already looking toward using a second reconciliation process as a shot for “REINS.”
“We’re obviously very interested in a second attempt at a reconciliation process, especially given the fact that the Senate parliamentarian was green-lighting our language and then decided in the eleventh hour that she wasn’t going to,” Cammack said.
GOP skepticism
While Lee and Cammack are optimistic, other Senate Republicans remain doubtful that a parliamentarian ruling would change in a future reconciliation package.
“I don’t know why it would change,” Paul said. “I would like to get [‘REINS’] passed. But short of getting 60 Republicans or Democrats having an epiphany, you know, it’s hard to pass legislation.”
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) is similarly skeptical that “REINS” could be included in a future reconciliation package. “I just don’t know how you’d word it so that it was budgetary,” he said.
Still, he said, it remains important that Republicans keep pushing for major regulatory rollbacks.
“The ‘REINS Act’ is one of those things that puts a check on the co-equal branches of government. For me, it would be a very high legislative priority if we could get it done,” he said.
This story also appears in Climatewire.
