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Voicing such concerns is what the SBA Office of Advocacy does -- other agencies would voice other concerns. I think there's probably some overattribution of political intent to this action by the Advocacy office, and apparently some misunderstanding of the role (and, frankly, prominence) of this "impact on small entities" issue within the Federal rulemaking process (EPA is not in a rulemaking stage here, but will get there -- SBA is voicing concerns about its assigned constituency as part of the normal agency interaction process). Since the Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980, all significant federal rulemakings have to give consideration to the impacts of the proposed or final rule on small entities (businesses, governments, local entities of various forms) -- SBA has definitions of what a small entity is for most industries and activities -- it's usually driven by employee counts or annual revenue levels. Each rulemaking has to include a Regulatory Flexibility Analysis (a "reg flex") as part of its broader Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA), and if the reg flex analysis shows that a significant proportion of small entities within an affected industry or sector are adversely affected (usually due to the cost of compliance or to an impact to their revenues), the rulemaking agency has to identify possible changes in the rule that could ameliorate these impacts, and then explain why it has chosen not to enact those changes in the final rule. The Office of Advocacy at SBA is the birddog on these issues and has been a very energetic advocate for meaningful analysis by rulemaking agencies of these kinds of impacts and how they might be mitigated. What happened is a normal part of the run up to a very significant rule; that it was misrepresenteded and blown out of proportion is probably partly due to malice and partly due to ignorance in the press and elsewhere of this part of the rulemaking process and the interactions between rulemaking agencies and other independent agencies like SBA.