Member Corner

House-Passed Bill Updates Securities Laws and Helps Innovators
By Chairman French Hill (AR-02) and Rep. Ann Wagner (MO-02)
December 12, 2025

Keeping the American economy healthy is like tending to the world’s greatest campfire. While small businesses and entrepreneurs are the vital fuel sparking job creation and innovation, our outdated securities laws are wet logs.

Most venture funding still flows to a few coastal cities, limiting access to capital for entrepreneurs across the country. The last major legislative effort focused on capital formation was the bipartisan JOBS Act of 2012. 

Three critical issues in our securities laws are actively stifling economic growth. First, these laws limit access to capital for small businesses and, as a direct result, job-creating entrepreneurs in the Midwest, South and rural America are shut out when trying to raise capital. Second, they limit investment opportunities for Main Street investors. In fact, the current securities laws determine who can invest in private offerings based on how much money they have instead of how much financial knowledge they possess, unfairly preventing millions of Americans from investing in promising, early-stage companies. Third, they are causing the public markets to shrink.  

Since 1997, the number of publicly traded U.S. companies has fallen from 8,800 to fewer than 4,000 today. This decline limits investment opportunities for those saving for retirement, withholding the best companies from the average saver. 

Thankfully, the House Financial Services Committee has been working on solutions. The House of Representatives just passed the INVEST Act with strong bipartisan support, including nearly 90 Democratic votes. This bipartisan bill will expand access to capital for small businesses, increases opportunities for investors, and strengthens our public markets. 

The first pillar of the INVEST Act is to modernize rules that hurt small businesses. For example, it instructs the Securities and Exchange Commission to adjust the definition of a “small entity” and ensure that future agency rulemakings are required to consider the unique impacts on these local job creators. It clears the bottleneck for funds financing early-stage growth by increasing the thresholds for qualifying venture capital funds and clarifying what constitutes a qualifying investment. These types of reforms ensure that capital flows not only to Wall Street and Silicon Valley, but to small businesses and entrepreneurs across the American heartland. 

The INVEST Act also expands investment opportunities for Main Street investors, ensuring that retirement savers — not just Wall Street insiders — share in the success of tomorrow’s leading companies. For too long, knowledgeable and informed investors have been excluded from investment opportunities because they aren’t wealthy enough. That is simply wrong.  

The INVEST Act modernizes the “accredited investor” definition so education, professional credentials and experience — not only wealth — determine who can invest in private offerings. This reform grants millions of Americans access to investment opportunities in tomorrow’s leading companies.  

The INVEST Act also expands investment choices and flexibility for retirement plans relied upon by teachers and nonprofits. It protects seniors by increasing safeguards and resources to combat financial fraud and exploitation. 

Finally, the INVEST Act seeks to strengthen our public markets. By streamlining and simplifying burdensome and overly complex disclosure requirements, it makes it easier for companies to go and stay public in the U.S. The bill provides businesses with more flexibility to raise capital on competitive terms, helping them grow here at home instead of being lured overseas. It also modernizes the way companies can test investor interest before an initial public offering and lets entrepreneurs gauge real demand before committing to the difficult and costly task of going public.

In May of this year, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote, “our capital markets are the envy of the world, and President Trump intends to strengthen them further.”

Through the INVEST Act, the House Financial Services Committee delivers on that directive by re-igniting U.S. capital markets to ensure they remain the world’s deepest and most liquid, while expanding market access to more Americans than ever.

French Hill is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and Ann Wagner is the chairwoman of the House Financial Services Capital Markets Subcommittee.