Led by a nearly united Republican front, the House of Representatives this month approved a resolution of disapproval against the Obama Administration’s Clean Water Rule, a measure that if enacted would nullify the controversial EPA/Army Corps of Engineers regulation. But President Obama vetoed the resolution on January 19, sending it back to Congress where an override attempt in the U.S. Senate initially failed to reach the 60-vote threshold necessary to advance to the floor, though Senate Republican leaders could revisit the issue in the future.
Originally approved by the Senate last November, S.J.Res. 22 would invoke the Congressional Review Act, which allows a simple majority of the House and Senate to act to overturn recently promulgated federal regulations, and would declare that the Clean Water Rule “shall have no force or effect.” The resolution gained near-unanimous support among Republicans on Capitol Hill, but only attracted the backing of a small handful of Democrats – making clear early on that the proposal lacked a feasible path to enactment.
A veto message issued by President Obama on January 19 called the rule “a product of extensive public involvement and years of work,” and said S.J.Res. 22 “seeks to block the progress represented by this rule and deny businesses and communities the regulatory certainty and clarity needed to invest in projects that rely on clean water.”
Conversely, the resolution’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, responded with her own statement following the veto. Sen. Ernst said she “remains committed” to reversing the rule, saying it “is not about clean water [but is instead] about how much authority the federal government and unelected bureaucrats should have to regulate what is done on private land.”
Prior to EPA’s release of the Clean Water Rule last year congressional Republicans repeatedly sought to block funding for the rule’s development, and since the rule’s release they have proposed keeping implementation dollars out of EPA’s budget. Each time, however, the language has been stripped out before the EPA funding bill advanced to President Obama. Lawmakers will get to work writing the FY17 appropriations bills in the coming months, at which point debate over the Clean Water Rule could begin yet again.