EXCLUSIVE — On Tuesday, the House Committee on Small Business will hold a full committee markup on seven bills targeting the Biden-Harris administration for creating burdensome regulations.
The committee markup comes following a May report by the committee that found that the Biden-Harris administration has imposed $1.7 trillion in regulations on small businesses, amounting to 312 million paperwork compliance hours.
The seven bills that lawmakers will be reviewing were all written to strengthen and boost protections for small businesses laid out in the Regulatory Flexibility Act signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1980.
In a letter signed by 50 trade groups, critics accused the Biden-Harris administration of circumventing the RFA, pointing out 28 instances where federal agencies “failed to adequately examine the economic costs of regulations.”
The May report found four ways in which federal agencies skirted around creating regulations without checking to see if it would burden small businesses.
An investigation found federal agencies “often improperly certify that rules will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities,” according to the letter. Agencies also would not check to see if a new rule was in conflict with other rules or duplicative, and some agencies also wouldn’t comply with congressional oversight or hand over requested information during the rulemaking process to Congress.
“In response to these findings, the Committee has prioritized several legislative proposals to strengthen the RFA,” the letter stated. “One proposal, the bipartisan Prove It Act, would increase small business input in the regulatory process and ensure agencies are fully accounting for the impact of regulations on small businesses. Other proposals would increase the transparency and accountability of the regulatory process for small businesses.”
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Rep. Roger Williams (R-TX), chairman of the House Committee on Small Business, said the bills will look to close the loopholes allowing federal agencies to create regulations without consideration for their impact on small businesses.
“The regulatory burden placed on Main Street America throughout the Biden-Harris Administration is hard to comprehend,” Williams said. “The legislation we are putting forward, like the Prove It Act, will take necessary steps to improve transparency and ensure federal agencies are fully accounting for their regulatory impacts on small businesses.”
