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Stability is Instability in Italy as Prime Minister Resigns

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Reuters: Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is set to resign on Monday after suffering a crushing defeat in a referendum over constitutional reform, tipping the euro zone’s third-largest economy into political turmoil.

His decision to quit after just two-and-a-half years in office deals a blow to the European Union, already reeling from multiple crises and struggling to overcome anti-establishment forces that have battered the Western world this year.

Renzi’s emotional, midnight resignation announcement sent the euro lower and jolted stock and bond markets on concerns that early elections could follow, possibly paving the way for an anti-euro party, the 5-Star Movement, to come to power.

Financial markets bounced back later in the morning as European officials played down the prospect of a broader euro zone crisis, but Italy’s fragile bank sector had dropped more than 4.7 percent at 1320 GMT. [.FTIT8300]

Renzi has called a Cabinet meeting for 1730 GMT, after which he said he would tender his resignation.

European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici dismissed talk of a euro zone crisis, and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble urged calm. Both said Italy’s institutions are capable of handling a government change, which would be its 64th since 1946.

Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan, who has pulled out of meetings with European finance ministers in Brussels this week, is viewed as a possible candidate to replace Renzi. Senate President Pietro Grasso and Transport Minister Graziano Delrio have also been tipped as possible successors.

It is unclear if Renzi will have enough support in his Democratic Party (PD) to remain party leader – a role that could give him a say in who becomes the next prime minister.

The government crisis could open the door to elections next year and to the possibility of the opposition 5-Star Movement gaining power in the heart of the single currency area. 5-Star, which campaigned hard for a ‘No’ vote, wants to hold a referendum instead on membership of the euro.

“I take full responsibility for the defeat,” Renzi said in his late-night speech, pledging to formally resign to President Sergio Mattarella on Monday.

“I will greet my successor with a smile and a hug, whoever it might be,” he said, struggling to contain his emotions when he thanked his wife and children for their support.

“We are not robots,” he said at one point.

SUCCESSOR

Sunday’s referendum was over government plans to reduce the powers of the upper house Senate and regional authorities but was viewed by many people as a chance to register dissatisfaction with Renzi, who has struggled to revive economic growth, and mainstream politics.

“No” won an overwhelming 59.1 percent of the vote, according to the final count. About 33 million Italians, or two-thirds of eligible voters, cast ballots following months of bitter campaigning that pitted Renzi against all major opposition parties, including the anti-establishment 5-Star.

The euro briefly tumbled overnight to 21-month lows against the dollar, as markets worried instability could deal a hammer blow to Italian banks, which are looking to raise around 20 billion euros ($21 billion) in coming months. However, by early in the European morning it had largely rebounded. [FRX/]

Italy’s banks are weighed down by more than 350 billion euros of bad loans.

Shares in Monte dei Paschi fluctuated wildly on Monday and were down almost 5 percent at 1320 GMT, as a consortium of investment bankers met to discuss a capital increase to raise 5 billion euros which the lender needs by the end of the month to avoid being wound down.

Yields on Italy’s benchmark 10-year bond initially soared to more than 2.07 percent, but then retreated back to 2.04 percent. [GVD/EUR]

Mattarella will consult with party leaders before naming a new prime minister – the fourth successive head of government to be appointed without an electoral mandate, a fact that underscores the fragility of Italy’s political system.

In the meantime, Renzi would stay on as caretaker.

The new prime minister, who will need the backing of Renzi’s PD to take office, will have to draw up a new electoral law, with 5-Star urging a swift deal to open the way for elections in early 2017, a year ahead of schedule.

“From tomorrow, we will start work on putting together 5-Star’s future program and the team of people that will make up a future government,” said Luigi Di Maio, tipped to be the group’s prime ministerial candidate.

Opinion polls put 5-Star neck-and-neck with the PD.

DEMOLITION MAN

Renzi, 41, took office in 2014 promising to shake up hidebound Italy and presenting himself as an anti-establishment “demolition man” determined to crash through a smothering bureaucracy and reshape creaking institutions.

However, his economic policies have made little impact, and the 5-Star Movement has claimed the anti-establishment banner, tapping into a populist mood that has seen Britons vote to leave the European Union and Americans elect Donald Trump president.

In a moment of relief for mainstream Europe, Austrian voters on Sunday rejected Norbert Hofer, vying to become the first freely elected far-right head of state in Europe since World War Two, choosing a Greens leader as president instead.

But elsewhere, the established order is in retreat. French President Francois Hollande said last week he would not seek re-election next year, and even German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks vulnerable as she seeks a fourth term in 2017.

Just this past July, 2016:

BusinessInsider: The economic and political crisis brewing in Italy was, until recently at least, going largely unnoticed. 

Italians will have a say on reforms to its Senate, the upper house of parliament, in October.

The proposed reforms are widespread, and if approved could improve the stability of Italy’s political set up and allow Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to push through laws aimed at improving the country’s economic competitiveness.

If denied, Renzi’s government will most likely fall, plunging Italy back into the type of political chaos last seen after the ousting of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, according to Deutsche Bank.

The country is also contending with a banking crisis, and a stagnant economy with crushingly low productivity, a history of missing growth targets, and generally underperforming the rest of Europe in recent years. All this led the International Monetary Fund to warn earlier this week of “two lost decades” for the nation.

All in all, things don’t look particularly peachy for Italy, especially when warnings that the country’s woes — and not Brexit — could be the catalyst to tear the Eurozone apart in coming years.

But what exactly are the biggest issues that present risks to Italy and its political and economic stability? Thankfully, following its recent mission to the country, the International Monetary Fund has produced a handy flow chart, or “risk matrix” showing all the threats to stability in the country.

It includes growing tensions in the Middle East, the UK’s vote to leave the EU, the rise of populism, and of course, Italy’s banking crisis which — despite steps being taken towards a solution — is still a massive threat.

The Beltway Lawyer Chatter about the Trump Admin

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As Trump Tests Legal Boundaries, Small DOJ Unit Poised for Big Role

Zoe Tillman, The National Law Journal

President-elect Donald Trump moved quickly in naming his picks for two key legal posts, selecting a conservative politician in Sen. Jeff Sessions to run the U.S. Department of Justice and a loyal adviser in Jones Day partner Donald McGahn II to serve as White House counsel.

Washington lawyers now have their eyes on a less visible appointment, but one that could set the tone on issues ranging from how completely the incoming president separates himself from his business interests to how his administration acts on campaign promises to spike trade agreements and revive harsh interrogation policies.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which handles legal questions from the White House and federal agencies, often has the last word on murky areas of law and there are plenty trailing Trump into the White House. That positions the next OLC chief to play a key role as the White House maps out its agenda but may also mean navigating delicate politics in an administration that seems bent on testing conventional legal doctrine.

Former OLC officials say the next head of the office will have to walk a fine line to be a lawyer Trump trusts and won’t try to circumvent, without being seen as a rubber stamp.

“It’s going to be an interesting time at OLC because a number of issues are going to be turned upside down,” said Walter Dellinger, a partner at O’Melveny & Myers who led the office from 1993 to 1996.

Citing Trump’s statements in favor of waterboarding, for instance, Dellinger said “the fact that the incoming president has stated in several areas that he intends not to follow existing law will make the position more challenging—and more interesting.”

The Office of Legal Counsel often has a behind-the-scenes role in controversial executive branch policies. Under President George W. Bush, the Office of Legal Counsel established the legal framework for harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding; under President Barack Obama, it signed off on the deferral of deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants.

Questions about Trump’s ties to his eponymous company are expected to reach the office early in the new administration. In 2009, the OLC published an opinion about Obama’s acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, concluding that it didn’t violate the constitutional prohibition on receiving gifts or titles from foreign governments. Trump’s business dealings overseas and ties that his U.S. properties have to foreign governments present a new set of ethics questions.

Should Trump follow through on his campaign pledges to roll back Obama’s executive actions and federal regulations on everything from immigration to climate change, the office would advise him on whether he could do it, and how.

Early in Obama’s presidency, the OLC withdrew legal opinions from the second Bush administration about the use of harsh interrogation techniques on terror suspects. Trump, who said on the campaign trail that “torture works,” could ask the office to revisit the issue.

A large part of the office’s work is resolving legal spats among agencies and interpreting federal laws and regulations. The lawyers review executive orders, and serve as an adviser to the executive branch on separation-of-powers issues. Occasionally, a big legal question—like torture or government surveillance—will come through.

John McGinnis, a professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law who served as deputy assistant attorney general in the office from 1987 to 1991, cautioned against assuming that Trump’s campaign proclamations signal the policies he’ll embrace as president.

“People in campaigns, this is all politicians, do not speak in policy legal terms. I would not want to predict that what will come to OLC can be captured in the soundbites of a campaign,” McGinnis said.

Since the election, Trump has continued to express his interest in reviving the practice of waterboarding, although he said in a recent interview with The New York Times that he was intrigued by his conversation with a military general who said the practice wasn’t effective.

LEGAL CREDIBILITY

The Office of Legal Counsel is staffed by about 25 attorneys and has a budget of roughly $8 million. Yet because of its influence, it is one of the more politically contentious offices at the Justice Department. That was especially true in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when the office faced criticism for providing a legal rationale for torturing terror suspects. Both Bush and Obama saw nominees to lead the office stall in the Senate amid partisan opposition.

With a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate and weakened filibuster rules for executive nominees, Trump is expected to have an easier time getting his nominee through.

Some former DOJ officials questioned whether Trump might have a tough time finding a lawyer willing to serve, given the nature of the legal questions they’re expected to confront and the president-elect’s reputation as someone who doesn’t like to be told “no.”

A former top DOJ official in the second Bush administration who spoke on condition of anonymity said he knew lawyers who were hesitant about working for the department and for the OLC, given the controversial questions that office takes on. However, he said that there were many others who would want to work in government regardless of reservations they might have about the president-elect. .

The office has been a stepping stone for many influential lawyers. Among those who held the post under past Republican presidents are the late Supreme Court justices William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia; Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partner Theodore Olson; J. Michael Luttig, general counsel of The Boeing Co. and a retired judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit; and Ninth Circuit Judge Jay Bybee, who ran the office in the aftermath of 9/11 and signed the legal opinion authorizing “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Carl Nichols, a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr and a former principal deputy associate attorney general during the second Bush administration, said the OLC chief is typically one of the most trusted advisers to the attorney general.

The office has “enormous legal credibility,” Nichols said. The specifics of the legal questions surrounding Trump and his agenda differ in some ways from his predecessors, Nichols said, but the ultimate task of grappling with the scope of executive power is a familiar one for the OLC.

“It’s a place where the White House and the agencies know if they have a hard question, they’ll have really terrific legal minds thinking about it,” he said.

HARD QUESTIONS

OLC lawyers aren’t the only ones who give legal advice to the executive branch. There are White House lawyers and each agency has its own legal department. During the Obama administration, a body of senior agency lawyers known as “The Lawyers’ Group” met to consider national security-related legal questions.

Harold Koh, a professor at Yale Law School who served as the legal adviser to the U.S. Department of State during the Obama administration and worked as a lawyer in the OLC, wrote in a recent blog post that he thought the interagency approach, which had been used in previous administrations, was the most effective process.

“Different agencies have different equities, perspectives, and areas of expertise and getting the input of all relevant legal arms of our vast executive branch is vital to sound decisionmaking,” Koh wrote.

But the OLC’s decisions carry significant weight, said Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, and although the president isn’t bound by the office’s conclusions, there’s strong precedent against defying them. That has led presidents to occasionally try to circumvent the office, Adler said, rather than having to deal with a contrary opinion. He cited as one example Obama’s decision in 2011 to reportedly eschew the usual OLC process in soliciting opinions about the legality of military action in Libya without congressional approval.

The office’s legal opinions “reflect, or are supposed to reflect, serious, largely neutral or as neutral as possible assessments of important legal questions about what the executive branch may or may not do,” Adler said.

A successful OLC head will take an “extremely proactive” approach to find ways for the administration to legally achieve policy goals, building up political capital for the occasions when the office has to tell the White House or an agency that they can’t do something within the bounds of the law, McGinnis said.

Dellinger said that his advice to an incoming president would be to pick an OLC head “who has a substantial career that gives him or her substantial stature and the ability to say no, and that will help keep you out of trouble.”

To the next head of the OLC, Dellinger said he would advise he or she to make sure to consult with career government attorneys, to always give an honest opinion of the law, and to have a good career to fall back on in the event of a serious disagreement with the White House.

“The job will drive you crazy if you’re not prepared to walk out the door,” he said.

 

Obama Admin Illegally Raiding Funds to Pay for Refugees

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There is still time to begin impeachment hearings on these people, schedule Oversight hearings and refer to DoJ from criminal prosecution as it is Congress alone that designates exactly where money is to be allocated and spent.

Meanwhile it seems HHS and the Office of Refugee Resettlement does not think some of these agencies need all the dollars assigned to them, perhaps that too is yet another place to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse if those agencies can in fact due without the raided funds. In the end, the Obama administration along with Sylvia Burwell have violated standing law with twisted priorities to non-citizens…yup illegals.

***

Feds cut $167 million in domestic programs to house, feed illegals for just 1 month

WT: The Department of Health and Human Services is raiding several of its accounts, including money for Medicare, the Ryan White AIDS/HIV program and those for cancer and flu research to cover a shortfall in housing illegal youths pouring over the border at a rate of 255 a day.

HHS is trying to come up with $167 million to fund the Office of Refugee Resettlement that is accepting the youths, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.

Policy Director Jessica Vaughan said that insiders have told her that the funding crisis has forced the department to squeeze programs for money.

She just revealed on the CIS website:

“An average of 255 illegal alien youths were taken into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) every day this month, according to the latest figures the agency provided to Congress. This is the largest number of illegal alien children ever in the care of the federal government. To pay for it, the agency says it will need an additional one or two billion dollars for the next year – above and beyond the $1.2 billion spent in 2016 and proposed for 2017 – depending on how many more arrive. For now, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where ORR resides, is diverting $167 million from other programs to cover the cost of services for these new illegal arrivals through December 9, when the current continuing resolution expires.”

The money, she said, pays for “shelters, health care, schooling, recreation, and other services for the new illegal arrivals, who typically were brought to the border by smugglers paid by their parents, who often are living in the United States illegally.”

What’s more, it will pay for just one month.

Her sources said the following programs are being hit to pay for the illegals, about half of which the government will lose contact with.

— $14 million from the Health Resources and Services Administration, including $4.5 million from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program and $2 million from the Maternal and Child Health program.

— $14 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for contagious disease prevention and treatment and other critical public health programs.

— $72 million from the National Institutes of Health, for research on cancer, diabetes, drug abuse, mental health, infectious diseases and much more.

— $8 million from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, for treatment and prevention programs.

— $8 million from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

— $39 million from the Children and Families Services Program.

— $4 million from the Aging and Disability Services Programs.

— $3 million from the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund, including more than $1 million from the Pandemic Influenza and BioShield Fund.

The Vatican and Jimmy Carter Team up Against Israel?

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When is enough…enough? How much land does Israel need to give up before the Palestinians are satisfied? The answer? ALL OF IT. If Israel was to vacate all of Israel and land on Mars, all the anti-Israel factions would still not be happy….why? Countless leaders and organizations was Israelis ….dead.

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Vatican to Recognize Palestinian State in New Treaty

 Pope Francis at the Vatican in 2014 with Presidents Shimon Peres of Israel, left, and Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. Franco Origlia/Getty Images

ZOA Appalled: Vatican Tours Erase Israel –– Visiting Jerusalem Sites Labeled ‘Palestine’

A Sinister Echo of Replacement Theology

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has criticized the Vatican for organizing and promoting tours of Christian sites in Jerusalem, Israel’s capital city, as part of tours to ‘Palestine,’ erasing Israel from the picture. The ZOA regards this a sinister reiteration of Catholic replacement theology, whereby Jews and Judaism are theologically dismissed from history. Replacement theology served for centuries as the warrant and inspiration for theologically-inspired hatred, as well as vicious persecution of, and violence against, Jews.

A report from Italian journalist Giulio Meotti, a writer for the Italian daily, Il Foglio, indicates that Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi, a Vatican office that organizes pilgrimages to Christian sites around the world, sponsors a trip in “Palestine,” with iconic Christian sites in Israel’s capital city of Jerusalem. This is in addition to the fact that, as Meotti writes, “Catholic tourist maps and pilgrimage brochures omitted the name ‘Israel,’ using instead the sanitized expression ‘Holy Land,’ one of the visible effects of the Catholic ‘replacement theology,’ which adopts a de–Judaizing language. It [is also] no secret that Catholic pilgrims spend virtually all their time visiting holy sites in Palestinian-run territory, staying in Palestinian Arab hotels and listening to Palestinian Arab tour guides. As a result, these pilgrims return filled with hatred towards Israel” (Giulio Meotti, ‘Vatican buses promote trips to Jerusalem, “Palestine,”’ Israel National News, November 23, 2016).

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “The ZOA is deeply critical of the Vatican’s organizing and promotion of tours to Israel, the biblical, historical and legal homeland of the Jewish people, which erase and thus deny the Jewish identity, indeed the very name, of the country, substituting ‘Palestine.’

“‘Palestine’ was never and is not now a sovereign state, much less one with legal responsibility or effective control of many of the sites being visited on these tours. Palestine is not even an Arab name but named by the Romans.

“With its Nostra Aetate declaration in 1965, the Catholic Church repudiated its historical position holding the Jewish people responsible for the death of Jesus, renounced its traditional claim that Jews had been rejected by God, condemned anti-Semitism, and called for ‘mutual understanding and respect’ between Catholics and Jews. It is difficult to see how this epoch-making new affirmation and policy is being in any way honored by the Vatican with respect to the tours to Israel that it organizes and promotes.

“When Pope John Paul II visited the Rome Synagogue in 1986 –– the first pontiff to visit a synagogue –– he embraced Rabbi Elio Toaff and declared Jews the ‘elder brothers’ of Christians. One does not treat an elder brother as non-existent and revise one’s language to avoid referring to him, while exclusively seeking the company of his hostile neighbors.

“We urge the Vatican to cease organizing and promoting tours to Israel that do not name the country, do not refer to its Jewish history and which shun contacts with the country of its ‘elder brothers.’”

**** On to Jimmy Carter:

Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama: Recognize the State of Palestine

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter delivers a lecture on the eradication of the Guinea worm, at the House of Lords, February 3, London. Carter has called for Barack Obama to recognize the State of Palestine. Eddie Mullholland-WPA Pool/Getty

Newsweek: Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, who brokered peace between Egypt and Israel at Camp David, has called on Barack Obama to recognize the State of Palestine (as the United Nations refers to the non-member observer state) before he leaves office in January.

Of the U.N.’s 193 members, 136—more than 70 percent—recognize the State of Palestine and the Palestinian push for an independent state. But the U.S., Israel and dozens of other nations do not, with many arguing that the recognition of a Palestinian entity can only come about through direct talks and agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

The current U.S. government supports a two-state solution but Israeli ministers have suggested that the election of Donald Trump as the next president has dealt a huge blow to hopes of a Palestinian state. On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and called for continued Israeli settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Carter has now stepped into the debate with an op-ed for the New York Times on Monday.

“It has been President Obama’s aim to support a negotiated end to the conflict based on two states, living side by side in peace. That prospect is now in grave doubt,” he wrote. “I am convinced that the United States can still shape the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before a change in presidents, but time is very short.

“The simple but vital step this administration must take before its term expires on Jan. 20 is to grant American diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine, as 137 countries have already done, and help it achieve full United Nations membership.”

Carter added that U.S. recognition of Palestinian hopes for a sovereign state, combined with a U.N. Security Council resolution “grounded in international law,” and U.N. membership for the Palestinians would assist future diplomatic efforts to seal a lasting peace agreement.

The former president, who published a book on the conflict entitled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid in 2006, warned that the prospect of peace is slowly slipping away from the Israelis and the Palestinians.

He said that Israeli moves in the West Bank, past the armistice lines marked before its capture of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War, are bringing both sides ever closer to a “one-state reality” where Israel would preside over more than four million Palestinians living in the two territories, as well as the Gaza Strip.

“Israel is building more and more settlements, displacing Palestinians and entrenching its occupation of Palestinian lands,” Carter writes in the New York Times. “Over 4.5 million Palestinians live in these occupied territories, but are not citizens of Israel. Most live largely under Israeli military rule, and do not vote in Israel’s national elections.”

He continued: “Meanwhile, about 600,000 Israeli settlers in Palestine enjoy the benefits of Israeli citizenship and laws. This process is hastening a one-state reality that could destroy Israeli democracy and will result in intensifying international condemnation of Israel.”

The last U.S.-brokered peace talks collapsed in April 2014 and Israel has rejected international initiatives proposed since, the most recent being the French plan to host an international peace conference in Paris. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that he is open to talking with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas but only bilaterally and without pre-conditions, such as the removal of settlers from the West Bank or the end of Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank.

Agencies Presenting Midnight Regulations for Obama to Sign

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Agencies have their lists for Obama to approve. What does Trump know and what is he prepared for? The last days of the Obama administration could be the most dangerous of his administration, is anyone paying attention?

 

Obama is set to ram through last-minute ‘midnight’ regulations to secure his legacy and tie President Trump’s hands

  • ‘Midnight regulations’ are a last chance for a president to make his mark
  • As many as 98 final regulations are under review at the White House
  • These include air pollution from the oil industry and measures aiming to help highly skilled immigrant workers obtain green cards

DailyMail: Barack Obama is set to ram through last minute regulations to try and cement his legacy.

‘Midnight regulations’ are those introduced between November’s election and January’s inauguration of a new president.

It is a last chance for an outgoing Commander-in-chief to put his stamp on the presidency and, in the case of Obama, tie the hands of his controversial successor.

Obama can pass the rules because of a loophole in US law allowing him to put last-minute regulations into the Code of Federal Regulations (rules that have the same force as law).

As many as 98 final regulations are under review at the White House and could be implemented before the brash billionaire takes office.

Seventeen of those are considered ‘economically significant’, with an estimated economic impact of at least $100m a year, Politico reported.

Obama is trying to push through regulations on issues close to him such as air pollution from the oil industry and measures aiming to help highly skilled immigrant workers obtain green cards.

He is also pressing ahead with negotiations on an investment treaty with China and decisions by the Education Department on whether to offer debt relief to students at defunct-for-profit colleges.

By contrast, Trump has shown a disdain for climate change and campaigned on an anti-immigration rhetoric, describing Mexicans as ‘rapists’ and pledging to build a wall on the US border with Mexico.

The Republican has also criticized China’s trade and currency practices and threatened to impose tariffs up to 45 per cent on Chinese imports.

Gina McCarthy, US Environment Protection Agency Administrator, said: ‘We’re running – not walking – through the finish line of President Obama’s presidency.’

Obama has gone ahead with the ‘midnight regulations’ despite House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy warning him against doing so.

In a letter on November 15, he said: ‘Should you ignore this counsel, please be aware that we will work with our colleagues to ensure that Congress scrutinizes your actions – and, if appropriate, overturns them’.

Trump has also vowed to cancel ‘every wasteful and unnecessary regulation which kills jobs and bloats government.’

The so-called ‘midnight regulations’ can be reversed by the same executive agencies, but that requires a considerable rule-making process.

Congress could also effectively overturn them by passing more explicit statutory mandates – but risk turning an unwanted regulation into law.

A final powerful weapon at their disposal is the Congressional Review Act – however it has only ever been used once. This gives Congress 60 legislative days to review and overturn major regulations enacted by federal agencies.