CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

This week in the world of regulation:

• During the holiday-shortened week, 61 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. This is down from 68 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and 45 minutes — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• All in all, 1,427 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,449 new final rules.
• Last week, 1,162 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 32,928 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 78,400 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. No such rules were published last week, for a total of 13 so far in 2013.
• The total estimated compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $5.58 billion to $10.19 billion.
• So far, 102 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
• So far this year, 254 final rules affect small business; 23 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• A new rule from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Treasury Department implements parts of the recent U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement.
• The federal government has a Citrus Administrative Committee. A new Agricultural Marketing Service regulation “requires all fresh citrus handlers to provide the Committee with a list of all growers whose fruit they handled each season.”
• Cotton growers are required to pay the AMS $2.20 per bale they produce, same as in 2012. A bale weighs 500 pounds.
• The Fish and Wildlife Service is adding 38 new species from Hawaii to the endangered species list, delisting one plant species, and reaffirmed the listing of two others.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.