CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Despite Friday’s Federal Register containing an impressive 853 pages, regulations continued their relatively slow pace. If this keeps up, 2014 will see the fewest regulations issued in decades.
On to the data:
- Last week, 52 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. There were 43 new final rules the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every three hours and 14 minutes.
- So far in 2014, 216 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 2,572 new regulations this year. This would be the lowest total in decades; this will likely change as the year goes on.
- Last week, 1,808 new pages were added to the Federal Register.
- Currently at 5,264 pages, the 2014 Federal Register is on pace for exactly 62,667 pages, which would be the lowest total since 1995.
- Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Four such rules have been published so far this year, none of them in the past week.
- The total estimated compliance costs of 2014’s economically significant regulations is currently $1.6 million. They also affect several billion dollars of government spending.
- Twenty-six final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
- So far in 2014, 38 new rules affect small businesses. Seven of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued a rule from the Dodd-Frank bill that is a model of bad transparency. The text of the rule states: “This CFTC Rule is being promulgated exclusively under section 13 of the BHC. Therefore, the Commission did not conduct a cost benefit consideration under Section 15(a) of the Commodity Exchange Act. Similarly, Executive Orders 12866 and 13563, referenced by some commenters, do not impose obligations on the CFTC.”
- The federal government has a Citrus Administrative Committee. It is raising the assessment it charges certain citrus growers in Florida.
- The federal government also has a California Date Administrative Committee. It is lowering its assessment for date growers in Riverside County.
- Eleven new EPA regulations.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.