[roc]

While it's possible that too-low fees could hypothetically make the USPTO a drain on the federal balance sheet, it's currently a revenue source. [1]

And there's long been a separate (reduced) fee schedule for "small entities". And it's long been recognized those are still fairly high for situations like the lone-inventor, and such situations make up such a small slice of the USPTO's total revenue, that they certainly could be tweaked to be more accommodating without much net impact.

And because all that was well-known: The AIA included giving the USPTO some fee-setting authority. And one of their first proposals was to further reduce some small-entity fees and to create a new micro-entity status with commensurately-lower fees.

So it's not only a problem that would be fairly easy to address, without much adverse impact, it's actually already being addressed. (Though not really in-effect until later this year).

[1] Much ink has been spilt over the fact that the USPTO brings in more than it takes from the federal balance sheet, yet their budget has been left so low that they're chronically short on resources and thus backlogged.