S 164: Midnight Rules Relief Act of 2025

S 164 in plain English: This bill would allow Congress to vote on disapproving multiple federal regulations at once in a single resolution, rather than requiring a separate vote for each regulation. It specifically targets rules submitted for congressional review during the final portion of a president's term. Current law allows such rules to be reviewed by the next Congress but requires individual votes for each rule.

Stated purpose

To allow Congress to vote on multiple last-minute regulations from the final year of a president's term together in a single disapproval resolution, rather than requiring a separate vote for each one.

Key points

• Allows Congress to reject multiple federal regulations in a single joint resolution of disapproval.
• Applies to regulations submitted during the last 60 legislative days of a presidential term.
• Changes existing Congressional Review Act procedures, which currently require one resolution per regulation.

Arguments supporters make

• Presidents sometimes rush through a large number of rules in their final year to lock in policy before leaving office, and Congress should have a practical way to review all of them together rather than being slowed down by one-at-a-time votes.
• The current requirement to vote on each rule separately makes it very hard for Congress to keep up with a flood of last-minute regulations, so bundling them restores a real check on executive power.
• Giving the next Congress an efficient tool to review late-term rules strengthens the democratic principle that elected lawmakers, not outgoing administrations, should set lasting national policy.

Arguments opponents make

• Bundling unrelated regulations into a single all-or-nothing vote pressures lawmakers to reject rules they might support just to block others, reducing careful, rule-by-rule accountability.
• Many last-minute regulations address real public needs like safety, environment, or health, and making them easier to erase in bulk could wipe out important protections without adequate individual scrutiny.
• The existing one-at-a-time process already gives Congress the power to disapprove any rule it finds objectionable, so this change mainly speeds up wholesale rollbacks rather than fixing a genuine gap in oversight.

Tradeoffs

Making it easier for Congress to cancel multiple late-term rules at once increases legislative oversight of executive action but reduces the individual attention each regulation receives; rules with broad support may be swept away alongside unpopular ones in a single bundled vote.

Current status in Congress: In committee.

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