WASHINGTON — Following the overturning of the Chevron deference by the US Supreme Court one week ago, House Republican leadership continues to press for a review of federal agency regulations from the US Department of Agriculture and the US Forest Service.

Committee chairs expect to send letters to agency heads, including Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, following the Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo case.

“This week, House Republican Committees are sending letters to their corresponding federal agencies to demand the review of various overreaching regulations in our fight to free the American people from the power-hungry administrative state,” said Steve Scalise (R-La.), House Majority Leader. “Agencies can’t be allowed to run free without any checks on their power — we’ve already seen how frequently federal agencies will abuse their authority. We intend to ensure agencies are held accountable following the court’s ruling and observe the proper checks on their power.”

US House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-Penn.) addressed a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack stating his committee’s intention after the ruling.

“Unsurprisingly, Chevron unleashed decades of successively broader, more costly, and more invasive assertions of agency power over citizens’ lives, liberty, and property, as agencies adopted expansive interpretations of assertedly ambiguous statutes, demanding courts defer to them,” Thompson wrote in the letter. “Perhaps no administration has gone as far as President Biden’s to found sweeping and intrusive agency dictates on such questionable assertions of agency authority. The Biden Administration has promulgated far more major rules, imposing far more costs and paperwork burdens, than either of its recent predecessor administrations.”

Thompson noted that the committee would exercise its robust investigative and legislative powers not only to forcefully reassert its Article I responsibilities but also to ensure that the Biden administration respects the limits placed on its authority by the Court’s Loper Bright decision. 

Ranking member pushes on farm bill progress

In a separate inquiry on Capitol Hill this week, Representative David Scott (D-Ga), the ranking member on the House Agriculture Committee, called on Thompson and Republican leadership to bring the farm bill to the House floor vote before a hearing regarding the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 

The committee passed the latest version of the farm bill in late May. 

“I must express my deep concerns about Chairman Thompson’s willingness to forgo the farm bill,” Scott said in his opening remarks. “His stubborn refusal to engage on a bipartisan farm bill is irresponsible for the American people, especially our farmers who feed, fuel, clothe and house our nation. Since the divisive markup almost two months ago, there has been no progress on Chairman Thompson’s partisan bill. This delay hurts the American people, especially in our rural communities where our farms are. And it injects uncertainty into our Nation’s economies, both rural and urban. The willingness to delay the bill to play election-year politics is selfish and disrespectful to our farmers. They depend on us to pass a bipartisan farm bill.”