This statement from the SBA’s Chief Counsel for Advocacy highlights problems with how the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has reviewed federal regulators’ compliance with laws meant to protect small businesses. His investigation found that about two-thirds of the most important rules—those flagged as “significant” and reviewed by Congress—were incorrectly classified as too minor to need a review of their impact on small businesses. This approach has imposed over $100 billion in costs on small businesses.
Many agencies routinely unlawfully bypass requirements to assess the effects of regulations on small entities. The EPA, for example, went several years without publishing a single analysis of small business impacts, despite its rules being especially important for small firms.
The letter faults the GAO for overlooking these problems, selecting agencies for review without regard for which ones most affect small businesses, and taking years to respond to congressional requests while billions in costs piled up. When GAO gets the facts wrong, Congress can be misled about the true effects of federal regulations—making it harder to prevent unnecessary burdens on businesses.