Sponsors (7)
Introduced January 15, 2025 by Benjamin Cline · Last progress January 15, 2025
The bill gives small businesses stronger, earlier advocacy, clearer summaries, and more opportunities to influence and challenge rules, but does so by layering new procedural reviews, analytic requirements, and litigation pathways that increase agency costs, slow rulemaking, and raise risks of weakened enforcement or legal uncertainty.
Small businesses gain a materially stronger, centralized advocate in the SBA Chief Counsel/Office of Advocacy—able to comment early, intervene in litigation, and issue compliance guidance—giving them more influence over rulemaking and a formal enforcement channel.
Small businesses (and their trade groups) get clearer, earlier, and more accessible explanations of proposed and final rules—through plain-language summaries, earlier draft access, mandatory analyses, and opportunities to influence reviews—reducing uncertainty and likely lowering some compliance costs.
The bill increases transparency and accountability across agencies via GAO reporting, centralized SBA website summaries, required publication of regulatory flexibility analyses, and annual reporting to Congress/OIRA, making it easier for the public and lawmakers to monitor small-entity impacts.
The bill creates substantial added administrative and analytic burdens across many agencies (new analyses, reviews, outreach, GAO study, summary posting, and expanded SBA consultation) that raise costs for agencies and taxpayers and are likely to slow rulemaking.
Added procedural steps (SBA reviews, Chief Counsel involvement, expanded analyses) and new interlocutory rights increase the risk of delayed or deferred regulatory protections—potentially slowing rules that protect health, safety, or the environment.
Expanding the SBA Chief Counsel's intervention and remedial role, plus new avenues for early challenges, will increase litigation, legal complexity, and procedural uncertainty for agencies and regulated parties, raising costs and potentially clogging courts.
Based on analysis of 14 sections of legislative text.
Revises the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) and related statutes to strengthen the role and powers of the SBA Chief Counsel for Advocacy, expand what counts as a covered rule, require deeper economic analysis of rule impacts on small entities, establish pre-proposal review panels, increase public posting and transparency requirements, and provide limited relief from civil fines for first-time paperwork violations by small businesses. It also directs a GAO study of the Office of Advocacy's capacity and changes judicial review and agency review timelines to make RFA compliance more enforceable and more visible online. The bill increases procedural requirements for federal agencies (more detailed initial and final analyses, quantification or explanation when quantification is impracticable, web posting of analyses and agendas, 10-year periodic rule reviews, and consultations with the Chief Counsel) and gives the Chief Counsel expanded rulemaking, review, intervention, and comment authorities intended to identify and reduce adverse economic impacts on small entities.