CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Yet another snow storm shut down the federal government for a day, but that didn’t stop both the number of new regulations and the Federal Register’s page count from topping last week’s totals.
- Last week, 56 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. There were 55 new final rules the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation precisely every three hours.
- So far in 2014, 327 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 2,637 new regulations this year. This would be the lowest total in decades; this will likely change as the year goes on.
- Last week, 1,516 new pages were added to the Federal Register.
- Currently at 9,079 pages, the 2014 Federal Register is on pace for 73,218 pages, which would be the lowest total in five years.
- Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Six such rules have been published so far this year, two of them in the past week.
- The total estimated compliance costs of 2014’s economically significant regulations currently ranges from $614 million to $885 million. They also affect several billion dollars of government spending.
- Thirty-five final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
- So far in 2014, 61 new rules affect small businesses; 10 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- This week’s economically significant rules both come from the Energy Department. New energy conservation for external power supplies and metal halide lamp fixtures have combined estimated costs ranging from $612 million to $883 million.
- The Coast Guard is relaxing some of its citizenship requirements for fishermen.
- New handling regulations for Irish potatoes.
- Flight crew may no longer use cell phones in the cockpit.
- If you are an international weapons trafficker, you should read this new regulation.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.