Agency Accountability and Cost Transparency Act of 2025

This legislation mandates that federal agencies ensure their major rules are budget neutral before they are put into effect. Specifically, the head of each agency must estimate the cost of a proposed major rule to the public, which includes expenses for understanding or implementing it. To achieve budget neutrality, the agency is then required to identify and repeal an existing rule whose elimination would offset the new rule's estimated cost. A rule is considered budget neutral if the cost of the new rule is entirely offset by the total amount of costs to the public eliminated from the repealed rule. Upon publication of any major rule in the Federal Register, agencies must include a statement explicitly identifying whether the rule meets this budget neutrality requirement. A major rule is defined as one likely to have an annual economic effect of $100 million or more, significantly increase costs or prices, or adversely affect competition, employment, or innovation.