S-2427-119
Read twice and referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
Sponsored by James Risch (R-ID)
What it does
This bill would require the Department of Energy, four Interior Department energy-related bureaus, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to add automatic expiration dates to their regulations under specified energy statutes. Existing regulations would expire one year after amendment unless extended, and new regulations would expire after five years unless extended through a public comment process; agencies could exempt deregulatory rules from these requirements.
Who benefits
Oil, gas, coal, and mining companies and trade associations that view current energy regulations as burdensome, since sunset provisions create recurring opportunities to weaken or eliminate rules through inaction or deregulatory exemptions. Regulated industries generally benefit from reduced long-term regulatory certainty about compliance costs. Agency leadership sympathetic to deregulation gains procedural leverage to let rules lapse.
Who is hurt
Environmental and public health advocacy groups that rely on stable energy and land-use regulations to protect air, water, and public lands, since rules could lapse if agencies fail to act before deadlines. Career agency staff who must devote resources to repeated review and extension processes rather than new rulemaking. Communities near oil and gas operations, surface mines, and offshore drilling sites who depend on safety and environmental enforcement rules such as those from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement.
Supporters argue
Supporters argue that "zero-based" regulatory review forces agencies to periodically justify rules on their current costs and benefits rather than letting outdated regulations persist indefinitely, similar to zero-based budgeting for spending. They contend this would reduce unnecessary compliance burdens on energy producers, encourage domestic energy production, and give agencies a structured process to eliminate rules that no longer serve their purpose while still allowing beneficial rules to be renewed through public comment.
Opponents argue
Opponents argue that mandatory sunset dates create serious risk that important safety and environmental protections could lapse simply due to agency inaction, understaffing, or shifting political priorities, rather than any finding that the rules are unnecessary. They contend the bill effectively hands deregulation-minded agency leadership a one-way ratchet, since deregulatory amendments face fewer procedural hurdles to extend sunsets than protective rules do, potentially undermining decades of safety enforcement on oil rigs, mines, and public lands without a genuine legislative decision to repeal them.
Constitutional context
This bill operates through Congress's Article I authority to structure agency rulemaking procedures under statutes like the Atomic Energy Act, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, and the Federal Power Act, and does not itself raise a major questions doctrine problem since it narrows rather than expands agency authority; however, post-Loper Bright, any agency decisions to extend or not extend sunsetting rules would face independent judicial review rather than deference under the Administrative Procedure Act's arbitrary-and-capricious standard.
Checks and balances
Congress would impose a new procedural constraint on executive agencies' rulemaking discretion, requiring periodic renewal decisions that are reviewable by courts under ordinary administrative law standards.
Historical precedent
Some state governments and prior federal executive orders (such as periodic regulatory review requirements under Executive Order 13563) have imposed retrospective review mandates on agencies, though a hard statutory sunset-and-lapse mechanism of this kind has not been widely enacted at the federal level.