Protect small business by adopting regulatory fairness protections to improve bureaucratic consistency and integrity.

Small businesses are extremely vulnerable to erroneous, vague and conflicting regulatory rules and policies. State and Federal regulators issue tens of thousands of pages of new laws and policies every year. Fairness requires that a person should be able to learn of regulations and of their meanings before they can be sanctioned for violating them. The Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment gives Americans a right to have access to regulations and the opportunity to learn their meanings before such regulations can be the basis for any penalty. The Administration should adopt, to the greatest extent possible, the provisions of the Regulatory Fair Warning Act of 1998 (HR 4049 (105th)), and require states, as a precondition to receiving federal funds, to adopt equal or broader protections.