The Office of Management and Budget issued a memo on Thursday describing its new approach to its implementation of the Congressional Review Act (CRA). Under the CRA, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is required to determine whether agency “rules” are “major.”

In this memo, OMB calls for information about economic impacts to inform its “major” determinations, including for independent regulatory agency rules, which are subject to the CRA. This is significant because those agencies are otherwise carved out from OIRA’s regulatory review under EO 12866. The memo also directs all agencies not to publish or otherwise issue a rule until OIRA makes its determination. It also embraces the GAO’s broad definition of “rules” that includes certain guidance documents.

This is a significant development in regulatory policy and I share more about what this means in my piece over on The Hill.