CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

The Federal Register topped the 35,000-page mark last week. New regulations cover everything from tariffs on foreign cheese to dental implants to fireworks shows.

On to the data:

• Last week, 78 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. There were 79 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and nine minutes.
• So far in 2014, 1,584 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 3,328 new regulations this year. This would be the lowest total in decades; this will likely change as the year goes on.
• Last week, 1,265 new pages were added to the Federal Register.
• Currently at 35,435 pages, the 2014 Federal Register is on pace for 74,444 pages, which would be the lowest total since 2009.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Nineteen 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 currently ranges from $2.33 billion to $2.72 billion. They also affect several billion dollars of government spending.
• One-hundred and twenty final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
• So far in 2014, 295 new rules affect small businesses; 43 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• The federal government regulates the number of items served at school breakfasts.
• New standards and conditions for loan guarantees to Jordan.
• Interested in fishing for blueline tilefish in the Gulf of Mexico? Read this new regulation first.
• HUD’s Office of Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control is changing its name to the Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes.
• The Coast Guard issued 25 rules last week. Most of them establish safety zones around fireworks in advance of the July 4 holiday, or set when drawbridges go up and down. It is not known why local governments cannot do these simple tasks for themselves.
• It was also a busy week for the EPA, with 13 new regulations. Read them all here.
• The FDA is reclassifying certain dental implants from class III to class II.
• Thinking of exporting unprocessed cedar or crude oil? Think again.
• Having abandoned its ban on woodboard-aged cheese, the federal government continues its war on foreign cheese by revising its dairy tariffs and quotas.

For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.