1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Congressional Oversight of Sanctions Act . 2. Findings Congress finds the following: (1) Article I, section 8 of the United States Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations as well as to define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations . (2) The House Committee on International Relations report (No. 95–459) on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act ( 50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) states that given the breadth of the authorities and their availability at the President’s discretion upon a declaration of national emergency, their exercise should be subject to various substantive restrictions. The main one stems from a recognition that emergencies are by their nature rare and brief, and are not to be equated with normal, ongoing problems . (3) It further states, A national emergency should be declared and emergency authorities employed only with respect to a specific set of circumstances which constitute a real emergency, and for no other purpose and that [t]he emergency should be terminated in a timely manner when the factual state of emergency is over and not continued in effect for use in other circumstances. A state of emergency should not be a normal state of affairs . (4) Since 1977, Presidents have invoked authorities under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act with respect to 56 declarations of national emergency. On average, these emergencies last nearly a decade. (5) As of August 2019, there are 31 ongoing national emergencies involving the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the oldest of which was put in place forty years ago. (6) The average length of an emergency declared in the 1980s and invoking International Emergency Economic Powers Act authorities was four years. That average extended to 10 years for emergencies declared in the 1990s and 12 years for emergencies declared in the 2000s. 3. Sense of Congress It is the sense of Congress