President Barack Obama released a memo in January asking regulators to avoid imposing heavy burdens on small companies and to search for ways to minimize these burdens.  Obama wrote in his memo, “Agencies must carry out the regulatory law by allowing small businesses more flexibility in meeting the compliance requirement. They should take into account the resource available to small entities.”

A couple days later Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) said she plans to introduce a bill to require government regulators to consider small businesses as they draft new rules. “I intend to offer legislation in the coming weeks requiring the federal government to fully consider the economic impact on small businesses during the federal rulemaking process,” she said.

The legislation should be introduced in the next couple of weeks and small businesses should keep this on the radar.