Sponsors
The bill strengthens protections, transparency, and review rights for small businesses—potentially reducing regulatory burdens—while imposing new procedural requirements and deadlines that can delay rulemaking, create temporary regulatory gaps, and shift costs onto existing agency budgets.
Small businesses will get more thorough consideration of indirect compliance costs during rulemaking, which can lead to rescinded or revised rules and lower regulatory burdens for affected firms.
Small businesses gain a formal, expedited process to challenge agency §605(b) certifications and agencies must publish those certifications quickly (within 10 days), increasing transparency and enabling faster remedies when rules would harm small entities.
Centralizing guidance and related materials (e.g., on regulations.gov) and creating public comment opportunities makes regulatory interpretations easier to find and (if comments improve guidance) can produce clearer, more predictable guidance that reduces compliance uncertainty and costs for firms.
Rules may lapse or be barred from applying to small entities during curtailed reviews, creating regulatory gaps that could harm public health, safety, or the environment until agencies complete reviews.
Agencies will incur additional analytic and procedural burdens (short review deadlines, posting and comment management, and extra certification processes) that can slow rulemaking, divert resources, and increase costs for agencies and taxpayers.
Because the Act must be implemented with existing budgets, agencies may have to reallocate funds away from other programs, potentially reducing services, delaying implementation, or causing staffing impacts.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Creates an SBA‑run process to challenge agency 'no significant impact' certifications, requires indirect‑cost analysis for small entities, expands guidance comment, and penalizes missed 10‑year reviews.
Introduced February 10, 2025 by Joni Ernst · Last progress February 10, 2025
Requires federal agencies to analyze and publicly account for indirect costs that a rule may impose on small entities and strengthens the Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Advocacy's ability to challenge agency certifications that a rule will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. It also forces agencies to post and accept comments on guidance tied to economically significant rules, expands factors considered in 10‑year regulatory reviews to include indirect costs, and creates consequences (including temporary cessation of a rule) if agencies fail to complete required 10‑year reviews. No new appropriations are authorized to implement these changes.