Are they actually reviewed? My understanding is that the agency submits them for review, but doesn't require any action for them to take effect. If congress doesn't like it, they have to submit a joint resolution to overrule it.
The point is, if it were a bill, you'd have to have enough support to make the change, compromise on terms/ammendments, etc. It also means the elected representatives would be held accountable by the voters. As a regulation, they can avoid compromise and most accountability. The regulation would have to piss off the ruling party for the joint resolution to be a viable option.
They do get reviewed by a lot of people. special interests like industry trade groups, businesses, members of the public with an interest, and congressional staffers. Occasionally a Congress person gets involved due to an interest.
Periodically an agency proposes something that stirs up a firestorm, and rarely (but it happens), they do get overridden by Congress.
Usually it’s handled through the public review comment and strategically done strongly worded letters from interested Congress people or committees.
It’s important to keep in mind that these are the second order effects FROM Congress passing a law to create an agency and funding it.
Because the reality is that if the executive waited for approval from Congress or for the solution to a serious issue to be non-controversial, they’d literally never be be able to
do anything at any such agency. They already are dysfunctional enough as-is. If you think requiring sign off from the even less effective organization that is Congress on everything is going to make it better, I have a bridge to sell you.
And as enticing an idea it might be sometimes to have the DEA, ICE, FBI, etc. unable to actually function, they do generally serve a necessary purpose and them completely not functioning is unlikely to result in anything the nation overall would consider ‘good’.
The periodic Gov’t shutdowns help show this to be the case.
The register, with it’s problems, and even when abused (cough Ajit Pai and net neutrality) is still better than what used to happen, which was the agency would just do it’s own internal policy making and keep it secret until they got sued (which isn’t easy to do with sovereign immunity when the agency declares all potential evidence secret!) or Congress started to investigate. Then half the time they’d shred all evidence and deny all wrongdoing.
Congress has also made it clear they have no interest or ability to provide guidance or fine grained clarification on things at the level to actually be able to run an organization the size of the Executive or it’s Agencies. It would also probably be unconstitutional to try.
If you want to see some agencies that conveniently skip things like the Register, look no further than the NSA, CIA, large swaths of the DOD, etc.
IMO, the real issue is the ongoing massive income tax revenue that feeds the machine. It was originally used to fund the world wars, but never dialed back. As long as that giant stream of money keeps going to the Federal Gov’t, it will continue to be used to justify itself and be spent.
