Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

25. Small Business Administration · Notable · Needs Congress

Enact the Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act

Not started

758 25. Small Business Administration

“The Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act would require federal agencies to perform more thorough RFA economic analysis and provide a rationale for proposed regulations. It also would waive fines for certain first-time paperwork violations.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    The Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act has been introduced in both chambers of the 119th Congress and passed neither. S. 5178, read twice and referred to Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on 2026-07-30, does exactly what the Quote describes: §4 requires more detailed regulatory-flexibility analyzes, §2 and §3 widen the rules covered and the regulatory agenda that must be reported, and §14 amends 44 U.S.C. 3506 to require agencies to waive the civil fine for a small business's first-time paperwork violation unless the violation risks serious harm. The House companion, H.R. 421, was ordered reported in the nature of a substitute by the Committee on Small Business on 2025-06-10 by 13–12 and was never filed or brought to a vote — committee action is not a rung (playbook §3b).

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Leveled with #2041 (p. 752, Expand RFA economic analysis to cover indirect costs), which the pp. 749–753 pass placed at not started on the same bill on the same date. This Quote asks for the Act as a whole and names two of its features — the fuller economic analysis and rationale, and the first-time paperwork-violation waiver — so it carries the same finding with its own reading of §4 and §14.
  • H.R. 421 was introduced on 2025-01-15, four days before the evidence window opens, so its text fails the evidence gate and is recorded here as a lead: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-119hr421ih/html/BILLS-119hr421ih.htm (read 2026-09-01, identical operative text to S. 5178). No engrossed or reported version exists.
  • Negative search: cluster A in docs/research/ch-25.md — no presidential directive, no Federal Register document and no enacted law of the 119th Congress amends the Regulatory Flexibility Act.
Action
other
Object
Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act
ID
2064