Senate passes bill to rescind EPA waterway rule in second rebuke of Biden administration regulations
By Ali Zaslav, Morgan Rimmer and Ted Barrett, CNN
The Senate passed a bill Wednesday that would rescind a second Biden administration policy, this time challenging an EPA rule that Republicans argue places a burden on the agriculture community by being too restrictive in defining what is a navigable waterway.
The final vote was 53-43. The resolution, which cleared the House earlier this month, will now be sent to Biden’s desk where he has already threatened to veto it.
The resolution was able to pass the Democrat-led Senate by a simple majority using the Congressional Review Act, which allows a vote to repeal regulations from the executive branch without breaking a filibuster at a 60-vote threshold, which is required for most legislation in the chamber.
The vote comes after another recent GOP-led success voting to overrule a Biden Labor Department policy on how retirement account managers choose investments. The president issued his first veto of his presidency on the measure.
The Democratic senators who joined GOP in favor include: Nevada Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, Jon Tester of Montana, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Arizona Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema — many of whom are up for reelection in 2024.
Manchin, who backed the repeal, was asked earlier this month if he would vote to overturn the administration’s new EPA rule, he said: “Oh yeah, that’s ridiculous. It can’t be just a ditch that dries up. They’ll grab everything and make it miserable for you. The overreach.”
The Clean Water Act allows the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate “waters of the United States,” but the exact definition of such waters remains unclear.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in a case challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority in October. Critics of the EPA’s position cast the dispute as a battle of landowners across the country seeking to make use of their property without the interference of overzealous federal regulators.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, released a statement in support of the bill on Wednesday saying, “If the President vetoes it, Americans will need to hope the Supreme Court makes it clear that these EPA bureaucrats are way outside the authority that Congress actually provided in the Clean Water Act.”
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CNN’s Ariane de Vogue contributed to this report.
