H.R. 2409 would expand the functions of the Office of the Advocate for Small Business Capital Formation within the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to include identifying problems that small businesses in rural areas experience with securing access to capital. The bill would require the office to summarize those issues within an existing annual report.
Using information from the SEC, CBO estimates that implementing H.R. 2409 would cost about $1 million over the 2019-2024 period for the agency to broaden the scope of its current activities. However, because the SEC is authorized to collect fees sufficient to offset its annual appropriation, and assuming that future appropriation actions are consistent with that authority, CBO estimates that the net effect on discretionary spending would be negligible.
If the SEC increased fees to offset the costs associated with implementing the bill, H.R. 2409 would increase the cost of an existing mandate on private entities required to pay those assessments. CBO estimates that the incremental cost of the mandate would be less than $200,000 per year, well below the annual threshold for private-sector mandates established in UMRA ($162 million in 2019, adjusted annually for inflation).
