SEC quietly exempts small-business office from federal paperwork review
H.R. 3351 — Improving Access to Small Business Information Act · Filed by Young Kim (R-CA) · 3 cosponsors · Introduced May 13, 2025 · Passed chamber
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What it does
This bill exempts the SEC's Advocate for Small Business Capital Formation from most Paperwork Reduction Act requirements when gathering information. The Advocate will no longer need to submit collections to the Office of Management and Budget, display control numbers, or indicate clearance status — though some procedural requirements still apply. The practical effect is to streamline the Advocate's ability to gather data from small businesses without federal paperwork review delays.
Why we flagged it
The bill's sole operative function is to carve out the SEC's Advocate for Small Business Capital Formation from Paperwork Reduction Act oversight, reducing procedural friction on information collection. It is a narrow, technical amendment to existing law.
What the text implies
- The Advocate's information-gathering activities will no longer be subject to OMB review for burden justification, potentially allowing collection of sensitive small-business data (financial metrics, competitive information, operational details) with minimal federal scrutiny of whether the burden is proportionate to the public benefit.
- Removal of control-number and clearance-status disclosure requirements means small businesses receiving requests from the Advocate will not be informed that the collection is exempt from standard PRA protections, reducing transparency about the regulatory status of the request.
- The exemption may create a precedent for other SEC offices or agencies to seek similar carve-outs, gradually eroding OMB's ability to manage aggregate information-collection burden across the federal government.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Small businesses may benefit from faster, less burdensome information requests from the Advocate, reducing compliance friction. However, the exemption also reduces transparency and public oversight of what information the Advocate collects, how it is used, and whether collection burdens are justified — a trade-off between regulatory efficiency and democratic accountability.
Who stands to gain
- small businesses (reduced compliance burden on information requests)
- SEC Advocate office (streamlined operations, faster data collection)
Named in the bill
SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), Advocate for Small Business Capital Formation, Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), Securities Exchange Act of 1934
Where it stands
3 cosponsors: 2 Republicans, 1 Democrats.
- May 13, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- May 13, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and House Committee on Financial Services · Congress.gov: “Referred to the Committee on Financial Services, and in addition to the Committee on Oversight and Government…”
- May 20, 2025 — Markup held in committee · Congress.gov: “Committee Consideration and Mark-up Session Held”
- May 20, 2025 — Reported out of committee · Congress.gov: “Ordered to be Reported (Amended) by the Yeas and Nays: 50 - 0”
- Jul 21, 2025 — Passed the House · Congress.gov: “On motion to suspend the rules and pass the bill, as amended Agreed to by the Yeas and Nays: (2/3 required)…”
- Jul 21, 2025 — Floor vote scheduled · Congress.gov: “Mr. Hill (AR) moved to suspend the rules and pass the bill, as amended”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
2 lobbying clients named this bill on 4 disclosure filings across 3 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $55,560,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 254 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 41% of bills with at least one filing.
Young Kim, the sponsor, reported $1,636,312 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Chamber of Commerce of the U.S.A. — $54,660,000 on 3 filings
- Nature Conservancy — $900,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (1,731 characters) on Jun 8, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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