In other words, EPA indicated that  SBREFA—the statute that Congress enacted to strengthen the RFA—  caused the agency to use the discretion permitted in the RFA and conduct  fewer regulatory flexibility analyses. Previous Reports on the RFA and SBREFA

We have issued several other reports in recent years on the implementation  of the RFA and SBREFA that, in combination, illustrate both the promise  and the problems associated with the statutes. For example, in 1991, we  examined the implementation of the RFA with regard to small governments  and concluded that each of the four federal agencies that we reviewed had  a different interpretation of key RFA provisions. SBA repeatedly characterized some agencies  as satisfying the act’s requirements, but other agencies were consistently  viewed as recalcitrant. We also  recommended that OMB take certain actions to improve the administration  of these review requirements, some of which have been implemented. For example,  some agencies did not consider their rules to have a significant impact  because they believed the underlying statutes, not the agency-developed  regulations, caused the effect on small entities.
What GAO Found

The Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980 (RFA) requires agencies to prepare an initial and a final regulatory flexibility analysis. The Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996 (SBREFA) seeks to strengthen RFA protections for small entities, and some of the act's requirements are built on "significant impact." GAO has reviewed the implementation of RFA and SBREFA several times in recent years, with topics ranging from specific provisions in each statute to the overall implementation of RFA. Although both of these reforms have clearly affected how federal agencies regulate, GAO believes that their full promise has not been realized, and key questions about RFA remain unanswered. These questions lie at the heart of RFA and SBREFA, and their answers can have a substantive effect on the amount of regulatory relief provided through those statutes. Because Congress did not answer these questions when the statutes were enacted, agencies have had to develop their own answers, and those answers differ.