Midnight regulations

"Minor" regulations, or those that have less than US$100 million in effect on the economy or do not have major social policy significance,[1] have a similar 30-day waiting period.

[6][7] The Clinton administration enacted a flurry of rules limiting logging and lead paint, raising appliance energy efficiency, and tightening privacy of medical records.

Bush Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten encouraged timely passage of the rules in a May 2008 memo to agencies suggesting that final versions be submitted by November 1.

[15] A subcommittee on administrative law in the Democratic House of Representatives held a hearing on midnight regulations the month after Obama's inauguration.

Howard Shelanski, the Administrator for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), issued a memo to federal agencies directing them to: “To the extent feasible and consistent with your priorities, statutory obligations, and judicial deadlines, however, agencies should strive to complete their highest priority rulemakings by the summer of 2016 to avoid an end-of-year scramble that has the potential to lower the quality of regulations that OIRA receives for review and to tax the resources available for interagency review.”[17] In the Obama administration's final Unified Agenda, there were 25 notable rules in the “midnight period” with combined regulatory cost estimates (from the “proposed rule” versions) of approximately $44.1 billion.

[20] Notable rulemakings from November 2016 include: House Republicans introduced legislation that would provide a check upon Obama administration midnight rules.

5982, or the “Midnight Rules Relief Act of 2016”, that “amends the Congressional Review Act to allow Congress to consider a joint resolution to disapprove multiple regulations that federal agencies have submitted for congressional review within the last 60 legislative days of a session of Congress during the final year of a President's term.”[25] The bill passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 240–179.

[26] Senator Ron Johnson has written letters to Shelanski and multiple other agencies asking them to put a hold on regulatory activity during this “midnight period”.

Jimmy Carter was the first president to make extensive use of midnight regulations.
Bush Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten wrote a memo encouraging Administration agencies to pass rules in time for them to become law before the end of Bush's second term.