Dozens of House Democrats joined with their Republican colleagues on Wednesday in a vote to require the White House to assess the inflationary effect of President Biden’s executive orders before they are issued.
The bill is the latest effort by Republicans to pump the brakes on Biden administration policies that they say are causing the highest inflation levels seen in decades. But the bill was also supported by 59 Democrats, and easily passed in a 272-148 vote.
Under the bill, any executive order that has an annual budgetary effect of $1 billion or more would have to first be studied by the administration for its possible inflationary effects on the economy, which Republicans say would make Biden think twice about imposing costly new rules on the public.
[No it won’t, but it’s still a good exercise. Biden will lie about inflationary impacts, of course, but it will either force him to go on the record — or force the White House to ignore Congress on inflation, which won’t be a good look either. There’s a very large question as to whether Congress could impose any such requirement on executive orders at all. — Ed]
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