{"id":9417,"date":"2025-05-20T15:02:01","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T15:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/senate-will-vote-on-nixing-california-clean-air-waivers-thune-says\/"},"modified":"2025-05-20T15:02:01","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T15:02:01","slug":"senate-will-vote-on-nixing-california-clean-air-waivers-thune-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/senate-will-vote-on-nixing-california-clean-air-waivers-thune-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate will vote on nixing California clean-air waivers, Thune says"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Senate Republicans will move this week to nix California\u2019s vehicle emission waivers, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, setting up a high-stakes fight over the chamber\u2019s rules.<\/p>\n

Thune said in a Tuesday floor speech that he will move forward with three House-passed resolutions that use the Congressional Review Act to roll back EPA waivers that effectively let California set its own emission standards. Thune\u2019s announcement comes after weeks of internal deliberations within the conference and public pressure from members of his leadership team to hold a vote.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because the Government Accountability Office has found that the California waivers aren\u2019t a rule and thus aren\u2019t subject to the CRA, which allows Congress to nix regulations with only a simple majority, bypassing the threat of a Democratic filibuster. Crucially, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has backed up that ruling.<\/p>\n

Democrats have warned GOP leaders that they view moving forward with the disapproval resolution over MacDonough\u2019s guidance to be akin to deploying the \u201cnuclear option\u201d undermining the filibuster.<\/p>\n

Thune declined after his speech to detail how Republicans will get the resolution to a final vote, saying that it’s still a \u201clittle early.\u201d Several GOP senators acknowledged this week that they were working through \u201coptions.\u201d He and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) met with four potential GOP swing votes on Monday night \u2014 Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), John Curtis (Utah) and Bill Cassidy (La.) \u2014 to talk about the procedural mechanics of the resolution.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear how Democrats will respond after issuing their dire warnings. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) announced on Tuesday that he would slow-walk four EPA nominees in response to Republicans pursuing the disapproval resolutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf my Republican colleagues open this door and overturn the Parliamentarian\u2019s wise safeguards on this type of abuse, there would be no practical limit, and the Senate could be forced to vote repeatedly on such matters that are clearly not \u2018rules\u2019 notwithstanding the plain language of the CRA,\u201d Padilla said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Republicans have brushed off criticism by noting that most Senate Democrats previously voted unsuccessfully to create a separate exception<\/a> to the 60-vote legislative filibuster.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe that it’s nuking the filibuster,\u201d said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), criticizing Democrats who previously voted for a civil-rights carve-out now raising a \u201chue and cry about nuking the filibuster.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, multiple GOP senators have raised questions privately about if sidestepping the parliamentarian would be weakening their own chamber\u2019s rules and setting a precedent about what qualifies under the Congressional Review Act that would come back to bite them the next time Democrats are in power.<\/p>\n

But GOP leadership and supporters of the resolution are trying to turn the internal debate from the parliamentarian, whom many of them are wary of openly defying, to the role of the Government Accountability Office. Some have accused the agency of making a politically motivated decision.<\/p>\n

Collins, after the meeting in Thune\u2019s office, said that senators were still discussing the procedural path for the resolution but added that “I definitely want to see the rule overturned.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senate Republicans will move this week to nix California\u2019s vehicle emission waivers, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, setting up a high-stakes fight over the chamber\u2019s rules. Thune said in a Tuesday floor speech that he will move forward with three House-passed resolutions that use the Congressional Review Act to roll back EPA waivers that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}