The Office of Advocacy of the Small Business Administration (Advocacy) is a relatively small, obscure agency with a rather unique mission: to be “the independent voice for small business in the federal government.” In a new insight, Director of Regulatory Policy Dan Goldbeck walks through the agency’s most recent annual report and examines trends suggesting that federal agencies under the Biden Administration have been unable or unwilling to address small business concerns raised by Advocacy in a meaningful way.

Key points:

• Advocacy’s recently released annual report on agency compliance with the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) found that agencies were able to update only a handful of rules to provide roughly $91 million in regulatory relief for small businesses due to concerns Advocacy raised during the rulemaking process.
• This low savings total continues the Biden Administration’s emerging trend of historically low levels of RFA small business savings despite historically high levels of input from Advocacy.
• This report’s findings largely align with those of a recent congressional report on the issue and highlight the need for more substantive reforms beyond merely greater agency-stakeholder engagement.

Read the analysis