"These measures will deliver relief from regulations that threaten to wipe off thousands of jobs in the energy industry," House Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday. | AP Photo House begins tearing up Obama-era rules

The House passed two bills on Wednesday that will erase regulations targeting the coal industry and the oil and mining sector, launching Republicans' offensive against a series of late-term rules put in place by former President Barack Obama.

If it passes the Senate and is signed by President Donald Trump, as is expected, the vote will mark the first time in 15 years that lawmakers successfully used the Congressional Review Act to unwind executive branch actions — and Republicans lawmakers who were enraged over Obama’s expansive regulatory agenda say they are prepared to deploy the tool to kill a dozen or more rules on energy, labor and guns.


The first two such resolutions cleared the House on Wednesday, largely along party line votes, and target the Interior Department’s stream rule, which aimed to protect waterways from pollution from mountaintop coal mining but was fiercely opposed by the industry and GOP. The second kills a Securities and Exchange Commission rule requiring oil, gas and mining companies to reveal payments made to foreign governments.

"These measures will deliver relief from regulations that threaten to wipe off thousands of jobs in the energy industry," House Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday.

The Senate may take up those resolutions as soon as Wednesday, according to Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), who sponsored the Senate version of the SEC resolution. An aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said nothing was scheduled yet.

The Republican moves were blasted by Democrats like Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), vice chair of the House Sustainable Energy & Environment Coalition, who complained the Republicans relied on a “blunt and obscure legislative ploy.” And Isabel Munilla of Oxfam America said the House “voted for corruption today” in nullifying the bipartisan SEC rule, which was designed to create transparency around the payments that companies made to governments for resource concessions.

And Wednesday's vote was blasted by former Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, who helped write the SEC provision with Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin.

“It would be a real tragedy for democracy and human rights,” said Lugar, the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who now leads a center in his name focusing on global issues. “It’s hard to believe this would be such a high priority right now.”

House lawmakers are readying more resolutions, including one to gut the Interior Department rule aimed at reducing methane emissions from oil and gas wells. Lawmakers will also vote on resolutions to nullify a Social Security Administration rule expanding gun background checks for disabled people and a federal rule dealing with contractors’ compliance with labor laws.

Under the Congressional Review Act, Congress can pass a resolution to quash any recently completed rule, and it bans agencies from writing a similar rule unless Congress gives its approval. But Republicans will have to race the clock, since under the CRA they can only review rules put in place by the Obama administration since mid-June last year, and they must take action by late May or early June, depending on each chamber’s schedule, according to analysts.

The Congressional Review Act is particularly powerful because such resolutions can’t be blocked by a filibuster in the Senate, where Democrats can otherwise force Republicans from passing legislation without getting 60 votes.

Senate Democrats can't stop the Republican drive, but they can force up to 10 hours of debate on each resolution and eat up precious floor time.

Republicans in the House can move resolutions more quickly than the Senate can, but the House lawmakers aren’t inclined to ship across bills the upper chamber ultimately won’t have time to take up.

"We're not going to do just a whole bunch over here for the fun of it. But if the Senate can logically take them up, then they probably have a good chance,” said House Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop.

The resolutions are subject to a presidential veto, although Trump has indicated he will sign anything killing an Obama-era rule.

Signed into law in 1996 by Bill Clinton. the CRA had previously been used once before, when a Republican Congress in 2001 killed a Labor Department ergonomics rule that emerged in the waning days of the Clinton administration.

Critics have raised questions about the constitutionality of the law — whether it violates separation-of-powers barriers — as well as the extent of the language barring similar rules in the future. But it has never been tested in court.

The time limits on the CRA will prevent Congress from undoing older regulations, like the Clean Power Plan or the Waters of the U.S. rule. But Congress could still theoretically use it to target any regulations agencies are obligated to write in the coming years that Republicans oppose, so long as the president agrees.

For example, EPA is required by a court order to produce a rule this year requiring companies that mine gold, silver, iron and other metals to prove that they have set aside enough money to clean up sites once they are done. Republicans and industry oppose that rule, which EPA was supposed to write decades ago under the federal Superfund law.

In theory, once the rule is released, Republicans could pass a resolution killing that regulation if they can convince Trump to go along. If that occurs, it would be the first time a sitting president approved of Congress killing a regulation written by his own administration.

Esther Whieldon and Michael Grunwald contributed to this report.