[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 201 (Tuesday, December 2, 2025)]
[House]
[Pages H4989-H4992]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DESTROYING UNNECESSARY, MISALIGNED, AND PROHIBITIVE RED TAPE ACT
Mr. WILLIAMS of Texas. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 916,
I call up the bill (H.R. 4305) to direct the Chief Counsel for Advocacy
of the Small Business Administration to establish a Red Tape Hotline to
receive notifications of burdensome agency rules, and for other
purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 916, the
amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on
Small Business, printed in the bill, is adopted and the bill, as
amended, is considered read.
The text of the bill, as amended, is as follows:
H.R. 4305
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Destroying Unnecessary,
Misaligned, and Prohibitive Red Tape Act'' or the ``DUMP Red
Tape Act''.
SEC. 2. ESTABLISHMENT OF RED TAPE HOTLINE.
Section 203 of Public Law 94-305 (15 U.S.C. 634c) is
amended by adding at the end the following new subsection:
``(c) Red Tape Hotline.--
``(1) Establishment.--Not later than 180 days after the
date of the enactment of this Act, the Chief Counsel for
Advocacy shall--
``(A) establish, operate, and maintain a hotline, to be
known as the `Red Tape Hotline' to receive a notification
from a small entity relating to the burden of complying with
a rule, guidance, policy statement, or other activity of an
agency that is applicable to such concern;
``(B) establish an email address, submission form, phone
number, or such other method as determined appropriate by the
Chief Counsel for small entities to submit such notifications
to such hotline; and
``(C) establish a website providing such email address,
submission form, phone number, or other method in a manner
that is easily accessible.
``(2) Report.--Not later than 1 year after the date of the
enactment of this subsection, and annually thereafter, the
Chief Counsel for Advocacy shall submit to the Administrator
of the Small Business Administration and Congress a report on
the Red Tape Hotline that includes--
``(A) the rules, guidance, policy statements, and other
activities for which notifications are
[[Page H4990]]
most frequently received, including the affected industry
sectors for such rules, guidance, policy statements, or other
activities (as applicable);
``(B) a summary of the notifications received, including
the type of small entity or other organization that submitted
the notification and the geographic area and industry
category from which the notification was sent;
``(C) an identification of the agency that issued each such
rule, guidance, policy statement, or engaged in such other
activity, including an identification of which such rule,
guidance, or policy statement such agency issued or an
explanation of which such other activity the agency engaged
in, as applicable;
``(D) recommendations for each agency that issued such a
rule, guidance, policy statement, or engaged in such other
activity, for reducing the burden of such rule, guidance,
policy statement, or other activity on small entities; and
``(E) a summary of actions taken by the Chief Counsel to
address such rules, guidance, policy statements, and other
activities, including any such rules, guidance, policy
statements, or other activities (as applicable) for which the
Chief Counsel submitted comments or analysis.
``(3) Definitions.--In this subsection--
``(A) the term `agency' has the meaning given such term in
section 551 of title 5, United States Code; and
``(B) the terms `rule' and `small entity' have the meanings
given such terms, respectively, in section 601 of such
title.''.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The bill, as amended, shall be debatable for
1 hour equally controlled by the chair and the ranking minority member
of the Committee on Small Business or their respective designees.
The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Williams) and the gentlewoman from New
York (Ms. Velazquez) each will control 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Williams).
General Leave
Mr. WILLIAMS of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all
Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their
remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under
consideration.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Texas?
There was no objection.
Mr. WILLIAMS of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 4305, the DUMP
Red Tape Act, introduced by Representative Wied from the great State of
Wisconsin.
Mr. Speaker, entrepreneurs across America are driving our economic
growth, but too often they are forced to fight through layers of red
tape just to keep their doors open. Every day, small businesses deal
with outdated, duplicative, or unclear regulations that make it harder
for them to hire, grow, and innovate.
Since 1976, the SBA Office of Advocacy has served as a voice for
small businesses across the country. The Office of Advocacy works to
encourage small business success through the government's legislative,
regulatory, and administrative process. When it comes to regulatory
costs, Office of Advocacy is equipped to represent the interests of
small businesses at the Federal level.
To make this easier, Office of Advocacy launched the Red Tape
Hotline, a necessary resource that gives small businesses a direct,
real-time way to report burdensome regulations that are holding them
back.
The Red Tape Hotline empowers small business owners to speak up and
help Office of Advocacy hold Federal agencies accountable for the red
tape that is crushing their day-to-day operations.
The Red Tape Hotline was created by following President Trump's
executive order, ``Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation.'' The
DUMP Red Tape Act codifies the executive order and ensures that small
businesses always have a reliable channel to be heard.
This bill strengthens Office of Advocacy's ability to deliver small
business concerns directly to Congress, ensuring that we have the real-
world data which we need to push for smarter, more effective regulatory
policies.
While the public can submit comments to proposed rules, this Red Tape
Hotline provides small businesses the opportunity to provide feedback
on the true burden of compliance with active regulations.
This bill also requires Office of Advocacy to submit an annual report
to Congress summarizing the notifications received through the hotline.
By strengthening and formalizing this process, Congress will receive a
clear picture of how Federal regulations affect different types of
businesses nationwide. This will help ensure that Congress is acting on
accurate, real-world information.
Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle may argue that
the hotline improperly focuses on burdensome regulations rather than
collecting positive feedback, but it is simple: The purposes of this
tool is to identify obstacles that need attention, and regulations that
function well do not require intervention.
Small businesses are not asking us to preserve the status quo. They
are asking to eliminate the barriers that prevent them from thriving.
By isolating problematic rules, we empower Congress and Federal
agencies to focus time and resources where they are needed most, while
still preserving the regulations that work.
The DUMP Red Tape Act strengthens our commitment to a pro-job, pro-
innovation economy by ensuring that Federal agencies remain accountable
and responsive to the needs of Main Street.
Mr. Speaker, with that in mind, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes''
on H.R. 4305, and I reserve the balance of my time.
{time} 1530
Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 4305, the Destroying
Unnecessary, Misaligned, and Prohibitive Red Tape Act, or the DUMP Red
Tape Act. While H.R. 4305 is less objectionable than the other anti-
regulatory bills, it is simply not necessary.
To begin with, a deregulatory hotline already exists on
regulations.gov. Establishing another creates duplication and drains
SBA resources. Isn't this contrary to everything Republicans, the
administration, and the recently dissolved DOGE effort tried to
prevent, duplicity?
More concerning, the proposal hasn't been vetted properly. In the
first 100-day report, the Office of Advocacy indicated there were 96
small business submissions and, more recently, reported there were 301
submissions. Yet, despite repeated requests for more information, the
Office of Advocacy has failed to provide any specific information about
this request to the committee--Democrats and Republicans.
We have no way of knowing if the submissions are related to rules.
They could have easily been about tariffs or unpaid invoices to
contractors.
To the best of my knowledge, the Office of Advocacy has not weighed
in with the administration, which raises concern over its lack of
independence from the administration.
Turning to the specifics, the bill lacks adequate reporting
mechanisms to identify who is making the submissions, leaving it
vulnerable to abuse and unable to differentiate between a small
business, trade organization, or law firm. The bill focuses on the
costs of regulations, not the benefits, which greatly outweigh the
costs.
For these reasons, I oppose the bill. It is important to note that I
said to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that if we can get
information from the Office of Advocacy as to what small businesses are
actually submitting and the mechanics of the hotline to ensure
independence, I would be willing to work with them. Instead, the bill
is being rammed through the House to score political points.
I urge my colleagues to oppose the bill and focus on real solutions
to lift up small businesses during these troubling economic times.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. WILLIAMS of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may
consume to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Wied).
Mr. WIED. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of my bill, H.R. 4305,
the Destroying Unnecessary, Misaligned, and Prohibitive Red Tape Act,
also known as the DUMP Red Tape Act.
For too long, America's small businesses have been buried under
costly regulations. After suffering through 4 years of regulatory
onslaught by the Biden administration, totaling nearly $1.8 trillion in
new costs and requiring an additional 360 million hours to comply with
these new regulations, small businesses are desperate for regulatory
relief.
[[Page H4991]]
A report published last December by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
found that over half of small business owners view the cost of
complying with regulations as a barrier to growth.
Small businesses are forced to navigate complex environmental
reporting requirements, overtime and wage rules that change from one
administration to the next, and lengthy permitting processes that can
delay construction projects for months or even years.
Family-owned shops face costly data privacy mandates designed for
multinational corporations, while contractors struggle with ever-
shifting OSHA paperwork requirements that eat up their time better
spent on the jobsite.
Earlier this year, the Small Business Administration created the Red
Tape Hotline under its Office of Advocacy. This hotline gives small
businesses a seat at the table to highlight the prohibitive red tape
regulations from across Federal agencies that hurt their ability to
grow and compete.
My bill takes that progress further. It codifies the hotline into law
and requires annual reports to Congress so that we know exactly which
rules are holding back growth and what steps are being taken to fix
them.
I am pleased that my bill earned the endorsement of the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce and Associated Builders and Contractors, which recognized
the need for a direct line of communication to the SBA for small
businesses.
The DUMP Red Tape Act is a commonsense way to gather input directly
from the people most harmed by overregulation to allow Congress to take
meaningful action.
Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support this important
piece of legislation and stand with America's small businesses.
Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to
the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Walkinshaw).
Mr. WALKINSHAW. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill.
Codifying the so-called Red Tape Hotline, an anonymous inbox, the
contents of which, as the ranking member articulated, we know virtually
nothing about, will do nothing to help small businesses.
While the majority is busy claiming to fight bureaucracy by creating
new bureaucracy, they are ignoring the real crisis small businesses are
begging us to address: the looming lapse of the enhanced premium tax
credits.
I know this because I have met with small business owners in my
district, like Rachel Rozner, who is the owner of the Elden Tea Shop in
Reston, not far from here, a five-person business that is exactly the
kind of Main Street business that the majority claims to champion.
As she told me, Rachel's business depends on the tax credits. Her tea
shop is not an exception. It is the norm. Nearly half of all adults
with ACA marketplace coverage are small business owners, small business
employees, or self-employed. In many cases, the Affordable Care Act and
the enhanced premium tax credits have given them the freedom to start
their small business, but the Republican attacks on healthcare will
force small businesses to close.
Nationally, 22 million Americans, including millions of small
business owners, will see premium hikes averaging 114 percent. Some of
their premiums will double, triple, or even quadruple. These are
middle-class workers. These are employees of small businesses. These
are small business owners, the people keeping our local economies
alive.
Republicans keep telling us they are the party of entrepreneurs, but
you can't be the party of entrepreneurs while you are driving up their
healthcare costs and driving them out of business.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill.
Mr. WILLIAMS of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may
consume to the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Ms. Hageman).
Ms. HAGEMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of the DUMP
Red Tape Act and thank Representative Wied for his leadership on this
crucial deregulatory initiative.
In addition to regulations that are promulgated pursuant to the
Administrative Procedure Act, there exists a vast scope of additional
regulatory documents that impact small businesses. These are guidance
documents, memoranda, bulletins, circulars, letters, and more, which
Wayne Crews, a fellow in regulatory studies at the Competitive
Enterprise Institute, has more properly referred to as regulatory dark
matter.
Only rules that are adopted pursuant to the APA actually carry the
force of law. Yet, in practice, agencies seek to skew the intent of
congressional law and impose other requirements through this regulatory
dark matter, thereby avoiding compliance with the APA requirements.
{time} 1540
Identifying the full scope of the regulatory state as it exists
through this dark matter is not only a challenge for Congress and the
agencies themselves but for our small businesses, as well.
Under the first Trump administration, agencies cataloged or attempted
to catalog all of these various guidance documents, but as soon as he
took office, President Biden stripped away this essential transparency
measure in the early days.
The reality is that reforming the regulatory state begins with
identifying its true magnitude, and that is an exercise which Congress
simply cannot do alone.
The deregulatory agenda President Trump instituted, which resulted in
the creation of the SBA Office of Advocacy's Red Tape Hotline, captures
this reality.
It does so by creating a forum by which to partner with the small
businesses of America, who can identify sector-specific regulations
that impose undue regulatory compliance challenges and costs.
By voting for the DUMP Red Tape Act, we can codify this hotline and
the essential role that it plays and make permanent this partnership
with America's small businesses in a much-needed deregulatory effort.
Federal regulation's total compliance costs and economic effects are
at least $2.155 trillion, which equates to over $16,000 in annual
hidden regulatory costs to the American taxpayer. If we truly care
about affordability, about the economy, about small businesses and
their consumers, then there is no better policy than deregulation, and
this bill will further empower the SBA Office of Advocacy in
coordination with the small businesses that it represents.
Mr. Speaker, I thank again Representative Wied and Chairman Williams
for their leadership on this important issue, and I urge my colleagues
to vote in favor.
Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. WILLIAMS of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may
consume to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Schmidt).
Mr. SCHMIDT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise in support today of H.R. 4305,
the DUMP Red Tape Act.
I am back again on this subject with this chart that shows the growth
and the number of pages in the Federal Register where all of the
Federal regulations are published. It is where they are codified. That
is where you go to look them up, and the number of pages has quadrupled
in my lifetime.
Let me just offer a couple of thoughts on how this bill is, in my
view, important for small businesses to get at that problem of the
creeping weight of Federal overregulation.
In my district, the Second District of Kansas, the eastern part of
the State, it is, more or less, 80 percent of the small businesses in
the State employ 20 or fewer people. Eighty percent of them are really
small businesses. There are about 93 percent if you go under 500
employees. For a lot of us that sounds like a big number, in my part of
the world, but under 20 employees, that is a small business. Those are
the Main Street businesses we are talking about.
I talk with a lot of people that own those businesses, that work in
those businesses. They are all active in their communities. They
support everything from the local sports team to the local charity to
the local school's foundation. That is what they are focused on: making
a living, making their business work, whatever it is they do: providing
professional services, other services, retail items, manufacturing
items. That is what they are focused on.
[[Page H4992]]
They are not focused on this. They don't have an army of compliance
attorneys and compliance consultants to help them figure out what is in
these 200,000 pages of Federal regulation and what that means for how
they conduct their behavior in their communities each and every day.
Mr. Speaker, how do we figure out where to start? I think this bill
is a very commonsense answer: Ask the people who are most affected. The
whole point of the red tape hotline that President Trump set up and
that this bill codifies and makes permanent is to allow the people in
the small business world who are affected by regulatory decisions made
in this town, our Nation's Capital, to tell somebody who has the
ability to aggregate that information and do something about it. Let's
bring it to the attention of lawmakers that this is where you need to
focus. This one, of all of these, is what is making a difference in
preventing me from adding more employees or having a little more
liquidity so that I can maybe redo the storefront on Main Street. Maybe
I can give a little more to the local charitable cause or maybe my
family will just be a little bit more comfortable going into the
holidays.
Mr. Speaker, ask the people affected and listen to their voices. That
is what this bill does. It makes sure we put in place a simple
structure that is permanent so that the vagaries of this town don't
change things on Main Street.
Mr. Speaker, I strongly support this measure. It is just common
sense.
Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, small businesses are being crushed by the Trump tariffs,
and the SBA Office of Advocacy, to the best of my knowledge, has not
conveyed their concerns to the White House.
The Office of Advocacy is supposed to be an independent office within
the SBA, and it is responsible for advancing the views and concerns of
small businesses before Congress, the White House, Federal agencies,
the Federal courts, and State and local policymakers, but it has done
nothing on tariffs. That is particularly troubling to me and should be
equally troubling to my friends on the other side of the aisle.
Instead of helping small businesses that are being crushed by the
Trump tariffs, the majority is focused on creating another deregulatory
hotline, even though one already exists on regulations.gov. This bill
to codify a hotline at the SBA Office of Advocacy is duplicative,
unnecessary, and a waste of taxpayers' dollars.
The system is clearly broken. For years, the chairman and ranking
member of the Small Business Committee have had a strong tradition of
working together to find common ground. That cooperation was essential
in helping entrepreneurs launch and grow their small businesses. It is
exactly what we are losing now.
We are wasting valuable time today on bills that are unnecessary,
divisive, and a waste of taxpayers' dollars.
Unfortunately, my Republican colleagues are focused on regulatory
bills that will not help small businesses one iota, while allowing the
authorization for critical, vital counseling and training programs to
lapse. It doesn't make sense. Small businesses deserve better than
slogans over substance.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill, and I yield
back the balance of my time.
Mr. WILLIAMS of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my
time.
Mr. Speaker, despite what my colleagues say, there is no hotline that
exists exclusively for small businesses. H.R. 4305 will fix that
problem. It will provide an avenue for small businesses to engage with
the SBA Office of Advocacy, a voice that is focused on advocating for
Main Street.
This bill passed out of the committee on a bipartisan basis, and as
chairman, I am committed to getting our Members the information they
need to support Main Street.
Ultimately, this information will come as an annual report to
Congress upon enactment, but for now, we will continue to work with the
Office of Advocacy to understand concerns from small businesses across
the country.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. All time for debate has expired.
Pursuant to House Resolution 916, the previous question is ordered on
the bill, as amended.
The question is on the engrossment and third reading of the bill.
The bill was ordered to be engrossed and read a third time, and was
read the third time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on passage of the bill.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.
Ms. VELAZQUEZ. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further
proceedings on this question will be postponed.
____________________