Senate Republicans plan to move on Wednesday to overturn California’s landmark vehicle emissions law, using a little-known federal statute that allows Congress to strike down regulations and that Democrats claim would erode the filibuster.
The fight has serious implications for both environmental policy and the institution of the Senate. Republican leaders intend to use the statute, the Congressional Review Act, to force a vote to nullify federal waivers granted in the last days of the Biden administration to allow California to phase out gas-powered vehicles by 2035 and impose other emissions reductions.
They are acting even though the Government Accountability Office and their own Senate parliamentarian determined that the Environmental Protection Agency waivers were not subject to the review law, which is meant to give the legislative branch a way of undoing federal regulations, not state ones.
“Republicans seem to be putting the wealth of the big oil industry over the health of our constituents,” Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, said on Tuesday as he and other Democrats laid out their case against the Republican effort to undo his state’s emissions requirements.
Because resolutions of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act need only a majority vote, they are some of the only legislation that can avoid a filibuster in the Senate. Democrats have accused the Republicans of “going nuclear” on the California emissions standards. In the Senate, that refers to employing a simple majority to overrule precedents on issues that otherwise require a 60-vote supermajority under the filibuster.
Republican leaders dismissed the Democratic complaints. Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, who has vowed to protect the filibuster, said the dispute was over the “novel and narrow” issue of whether an E.P.A. waiver constituted a rule — not anything central to the future of the filibuster governing legislation.
Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 2 Republican and a leading advocate of undoing the waivers, said that the fight was a “smoke screen” for Democrats who want to use federal waivers to ban gas-powered cars nationwide.
“What they are trying to do is force-feed the American public electric vehicles that the public doesn’t want and can’t afford,” Mr. Barrasso said. He said Republicans were protecting the power of the Senate to determine what could be considered under the law.
“The determination is going to be made by the Senate,” he said in an interview.
The House, with significant Democratic support, voted two weeks ago to overturn the waivers, sending the matter to the Senate.
Senators are traditionally reluctant to upend their chamber’s rules, fearing that “going nuclear” will come back to haunt them when the other party gains control. But it has happened repeatedly in recent years, with serious repercussions.
In 2013, Democrats, frustrated at Republican obstruction of federal appeals court nominees, overruled Senate precedents to establish that a simple-majority vote was sufficient for confirming most judicial and executive branch nominees. When Republicans gained control in 2017, they then lowered the filibuster threshold for Supreme Court justices to a majority as well, empowering President Trump to name three justices to the court over Democratic objections.
Republicans have sought to focus the dispute mainly on the Government Accountability Office, arguing that the watchdog agency improperly interfered when it determined that the emissions waivers were not subject to congressional review.
Mr. Thune said it was “the first time ever the Government Accountability Office has decided to insert itself into the process and affirmatively declare an agency rule submitted to Congress as a rule is not a rule,” he said. “It’s an extraordinary deviation from precedent for an agency that should be defending Congress’s power.”
Democrats said the Republican focus on the watchdog agency was a diversion, and took to the floor on Tuesday evening to note that the Senate parliamentarian — the nonpartisan protector of Senate rules — had also determined that the waivers did not qualify for filibuster-free consideration under the Congressional Review Act.
“To use the C.R.A. in a way that Republicans propose is going nuclear,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader. “No ands, ifs or buts.”
He and other senators said a decision to overrule the Government Accountability Office and the parliamentarian would have future consequences as lawmakers try to take advantage of a new route around the filibuster.
“Just as we saw with judges, there is no cabining a decision to overrule the parliamentarian,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island. “And so any suggestion that this situation is ‘exceptional’ or that the precedent it would create would be ‘narrow’ is magical thinking.”
Democrats also said they feared that the Republican action on the California waivers was a prelude to Republicans potentially overruling the parliamentarian on the major tax and spending cuts legislation expected to be considered later this year. That measure is subjected to special rules sparing it from a filibuster that are enforced by the parliamentarian.
Despite reluctance to overrule the parliamentarian, Republicans say they are confident they have the votes to move forward.
Their efforts to nail down the votes got a significant boost last week when Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, the former party leader and a staunch defender of the filibuster, told colleagues in a private luncheon that he would support the move, according to people who attended the lunch but spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions were private.
Republicans also said that Democratic hypocrisy on the issue was rampant, given that many of those complaining about their push on the California standards were ready in 2022 to jettison the filibuster on voting rights legislation, a move that would have significantly eroded the reach of the legislative filibuster. But Democrats fell short of the required votes in that instance.
“The only people that have attempted to get rid of the legislative filibuster are the Democrats,” Mr. Thune said on Tuesday. “Every single one of them up there that’s popping off and spouting off has voted — voted literally — to get rid of the legislative filibuster.”
Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent for The Times, primarily writing about Congress and national political races and issues. He has nearly four decades of experience reporting in the nation’s capital.
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