“A bill to require certain agencies to impose extendable sunset dates on certain regulations, and for other purposes.”
No CRS summary available for this bill.
This section defines terms for purposes of the Act: (1) covered agency, meaning the Department of Energy; specified offices within the Department of the Interior (i.e., Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, and Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement); and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; (2) covered regulation, meaning any regulation promulgated by a covered agency under enumerated energy, mining, and outer continental shelf statutes (e.g., Atomic Energy Act of 1954, Energy Policy Act of 2005, Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, Federal Power Act, Natural Gas Act); and (3) regulation, meaning each part, subpart, or individual provision of a rule (as defined in 5 U.S.C. 551) promulgated by a covered agency.
This section requires the head of each covered agency to amend all existing covered regulations within 90 days of enactment to sunset one year after the amendment's effective date and to sunset all new covered regulations five years after their effective date (unless waived upon a determination of net deregulatory effect and notification to the Office of Management and Budget Director). It authorizes extensions of any sunset date by up to five years from the current date—(1) following a public comment period (e.g., via request for information) and a determination that extension is warranted based on comments or (2) without public comment if the extension accompanies a net deregulatory amendment—subject to repeated extensions meeting these requirements and a savings provision that public comment requests do not automatically extend sunsets. Upon sunset without extension, the regulation ceases to have effect, the agency must cease enforcement, and the agency must remove it from the Code of Federal Regulations as soon as practicable.
This section establishes a severability clause, providing that if any provision of the Act, or its application to any person or circumstance, is held unconstitutional, the remainder of the Act and the application of the provision to other persons or circumstances remains unaffected.
This section provides standard administrative provisions: (1) a savings clause preserving existing legal authorities of executive departments, agencies, and their heads; and (2) a clarification that the Act creates no enforceable rights or benefits, substantive or procedural, against the United States, its departments, agencies, entities, officers, employees, agents, or other persons.