Independent Federal Agency Compliance with the Regulatory Flexibility Act

Independent federal agencies are subject to the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA). Because they fall outside of presidential authority, however, independent agencies are not subject either to executive orders concerning regulatory impact analysis or to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) review of analysis. The absence of such guidance and oversight, characteristics of populations of entities regulated by independent agencies, and potentially differing adaptations or interpretations of regulatory flexibility raise questions about the degree and nature of their compliance with the RFA. This book characterises and assesses RFA compliance of independent federal agencies. As a group, independent federal agencies do less rigorous regulatory flexibility analysis than executive-branch agencies. The independent agencies rarely ever perform quantitative analysis of costs and impacts. Differences among the practices of most independent agencies that regulate small businesses, by comparison, were only differences of degree.