Sponsor
Beth Van Duyne
Representative · R-TX
Representative · R-TX
The bill increases transparency and can reduce regulatory burdens for businesses by forcing agencies to account for and offset major-rule costs, but it also risks stripping protections, delaying beneficial regulations, and enabling procedural tactics that could impede needed public-health, safety, and environmental rules.
Taxpayers and small-business owners will get more transparency because federal agencies must estimate and disclose the costs of major rules before issuing them.
Small businesses and middle-class families could face lower overall compliance costs if agencies are required to identify and repeal offsetting rules to make room for new major rules.
Including guidance and interpretive documents in the definition of “rule” increases public notice and agency accountability for actions that affect obligations and rights.
Middle-class families and businesses could lose existing protections or services because agencies must repeal existing rules to offset the costs of new major rules.
Mandating broad accounting of public costs (including costs to understand/implement rules) creates an avenue to overstate burdens and could be used to delay or block needed health, safety, or environmental regulations.
Expanding the definition of “rule” to encompass guidance and interpretive materials could spur extra litigation and administrative work as agencies rescind/reissue guidance, raising compliance and government workload costs.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires agencies to estimate major-rule costs, repeal offsetting agency rules so each major rule is "budget neutral," and disclose budget-neutral status.
Requires federal agencies, before issuing any "major rule," to estimate that rule's cost, identify existing agency rules that could be repealed to offset that cost, and repeal any such identified rules so the new rule is "budget neutral." It also expands the definition of "rule" to cover interpretive rules, policy statements, and guidance documents (with limited exceptions) and requires a statement in the Federal Register saying whether each major rule is budget neutral. The bill changes regulatory practice by forcing agencies to pair new major regulations with repeals that eliminate equal public costs, broadening what counts as rulemaking subject to these requirements, and adding public disclosure requirements about cost neutrality.
Official title: To require the heads of agencies identify whether major rules of the agency are budget neutral, and for other purposes.
Introduced March 6, 2025 by Beth Van Duyne · Last progress March 6, 2025