Washington, DC – Today, the House Financial Services Committee passed the Improving Access to Small Business Information Act (H.R. 3351), a bipartisan bill led by Reps. Young Kim (CA-40) and Josh Gottheimer (NJ-05) to cut burdensome regulations hurting small business owners.
The Improving Access to Small Business Information Act would
amend the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to specify that actions—like conducting field surveys—of the Advocate for Small Business Capital Formation are not a collection of information under the Paper Reduction Act (PRA).
Rep. Kim spoke in Committee in support of the bill. Read her remarks below or watch HERE.
Thank you, Chairman Hill and Ranking Member Waters, for holding this important markup.
I also want to thank my colleague and friend, Representative Gottheimer from New Jersey, for co-leading H.R. 3351 – the Improving Access to Small Business Information Act – with me.
My bill is simple. The legislation would specify that activities, like conducting field surveys, carried out by the Advocate for Small Business Capital Formation, are not a collection of information under the Paper Reduction Act (PRA). Currently, OMB’s approval process is prolonged and bureaucratic, which delays feedback collection from small businesses and their investors.
I am proud to represent Orange County which is home to over 100,000 small businesses. It takes grit, perseverance, and commitment to start with an idea and make it a reality. As a former small business owner myself, I remember often wondering if the government truly understood the way that its policies impacted small businesses.
Former Director of the Office of the Advocate, Martha Miller, said that “the Office went through a yearlong process just to collect registration information for our annual forum and ask a few basic questions to understand the audience attending”. Our regulations are restricting the government from understanding the needs of small businesses.
The SEC’s Office of the Advocate for Small Business Capital Formation is the primary office charged with advancing the interests of small businesses and their investors. With the ever-changing economic and regulatory environment, the Office must be able to adapt quickly to the needs of small businesses and gather timely feedback to improve policy. H.R. 3351 reduces red tape and streamlines access to tools that the Office can utilize to gather more effective and timely data. The better information that the Office can gather, the better the SEC can respond, and the better off our small businesses will be.
I urge my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to support H.R. 3351. With that, I yield the balance of my time.
