House Republicans are set to vote this week on three bills that would increase congressional oversight over the executive branch, for the purpose of reducing some of the onerous and costly regulations President Joe Biden and his administration have executive-ordered into law, including preventing bans of gas stoves. 

One of the bills under consideration says that no federal money can be used to regulate or ban gas stoves. This bill is aimed at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which has made moves in the last year to say that gas stoves are unhealthy and said in memos that it would try to ban them for environmental reasons.

Another bill would prevent the Department of Energy from imposing new standards on gas stoves that are impractical and unneeded. Most current models would not meet the new standard, and new models that did meet the standard would take twice as long to boil water and only save consumers 12 cents a month in energy costs.

Both of these bills have garnered some Democrat support in the House, because there are still a few Democrats there with common sense, at least some of the time.

REINS Act

The other bill under consideration is the REINS Act, which is more sweeping legislation that would give Congress a greater degree of oversight over executive orders than what they have now.

The way the law now reads, Congress has to jointly disapprove of an executive order to block it, and even then, the president can veto or decline their motion to disapprove.

If Congress doesn't have enough votes to override a veto, the order can stand.

Under the REINS Act, however. Congress has to jointly approve of a "major" executive order (one that has a price tag of more than $100 million) before it can take effect. This is a big change, but one that is needed because Biden has put in at least 69 regulations with a total price tag of $200 billion since taking office.

Major impacts

Most of these are environmental regulations, some of which will have major impacts on American life if they are allowed to stand.

Of course, Democrats in the Senate are extremely unlikely to vote on any of these bills, and even if they did, Biden would veto them. So while Biden remains free to saddle the American people with hundreds of billions of dollars in regulations, Congress is hamstrung in its ability to do anything about it.