Congressional Republicans — in blind subservience to their corporate donors — are trying to roll back hard-fought consumer and environmental safeguards.

With Donald Trump back in the White House and Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress, they are taking aim at more than a dozen regulations put in place by the Biden administration — all to satisfy their billionaire and Big Business puppet masters.

Here are just a few of the commonsense and popular safeguards Republicans are trying to overturn as we speak:

• Republicans want to scrap a recent rule that caps the overdraft fees imposed on hard-working Americans by Big Banks at $5 (rather than the outrageous $35 that was typical before the rule). Public Citizen led the fight to win this rule, which took years.

• Republicans want to scrap a recent rule that makes the oil and gas industry pay a fee for highly dangerous and wasteful methane pollution.

• Republicans want to scrap a recent rule that applies time-tested banking regulations to Big Tech companies that add payment services on their platforms (like Elon Musk wants to do with whatever’s left of Twitter/X). What exactly is the problem with requiring companies that provide banking services to follow rules that keep banking services safe for American consumers?

• Republicans want to scrap a recent rule that prohibits Big Banks from including medical debt in credit reports.

• Republicans want to scrap a recent rule that boosts internet access in schools and public libraries to narrow the “digital divide” that disproportionately affects low-income students and students in rural areas. Ted Cruz is really eager to discard this rule, which tells you pretty much all you need to know.

To do all this damage, and more, Republicans are exploiting a little-known law called the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to hastily repeal regulations put in place near the end of a previous administration with almost no debate and a simple majority vote.

The Congressional Review Act had been successfully used only one time prior to Trump’s first term. It was then used 14 times to overturn rules put in place by the Obama administration.

In effect, this obscure law has functioned as a way for Republicans — any time they have a majority in both the House and Senate after a Democratic presidency — to just throw out regulations they and their corporate backers don’t like, even though they had every opportunity to block them in the first place through the normal legislative process.

Tell Congress:

The only reason to think “regulations” is a bad word is if you are under the thumb of Big Business. The reality is that regulations are what protect us from corporate greed and wrongdoing. Do not use the Congressional Review Act to overturn commonsense safeguards that keep the American people safe.

Click to add your name now.

Thanks for taking action.

For progress,

- Lisa Gilbert & Robert Weissman, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen
 
 
Donate | Public Citizen | 1600 20th Street NW | Washington DC 20009 | Unsubscribe