Representative David Schweikert (R-AZ) has introduced legislation to automatically cut outdated rules and regulations.
Specifically, Rep. Schweikert's Regulatory Evidence-based Standards for Thorough Accountability and Reassuring Tests — Securing Updated and Necessary Statutory Evaluations Timely (RESTART-SUNSET) Act strengthens the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA), which requires federal agencies to assess the effects of their regulations on small businesses, by requiring those agencies to review regulations.
While agencies under the RFA are currently required to review rules and regulations, Rep. Schweikert's RESTART-SUNSET Act ensures compliance by automatically sunsetting all rules and regulations that have not been reviewed after ten years.
Agencies can exempt rules and regulations that can demonstrably prove no impact on small businesses, but they must provide additional justification in the Federal Register. Moreover, agencies must review repetitive, outdated, and inefficient rules and regulations that overlap with other existing federal policies and remove them.
"We cannot keep asking Americans to follow rules that agencies themselves won't bother to re-examine," the Arizona Congressman shared in a press release. "The RESTART SUNSET Act of 2025 offers a clear path forward. Either agencies do their job and review the rules, or those rules come off the books."
Schweikert had previously expressed support for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its efforts to cut back on government waste, fraud, and abuse in November.
"The efficiency that you and I find that is moral, that is good for America, good for the prosperity, that efficiency is a disruption to someone else's way [that] they make money," the Arizona Congressman commented. " That is why we had such battles over telehealth and digital health."
In June, Schweikert introduced the Forgotten Funds Act, which addresses a longstanding issue regarding government spending: taxpayer money is received but not obligated, meaning it is not committed by any contract or other legally binding agreement.
As a result, these funds will be returned to the Treasury if not used.
