CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The newest batch of federal regulations cover everything from municipal fireworks shows to Venezuelan sanctions. On Monday, the Federal Register will likely pass the 40,000-page mark.
On to the data:
- Last week, 56 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 91 the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation precisely every three hours.
- So far in 2015, 1,658 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 3,140 new regulations this year, which would be several hundred fewer rules than the usual total of 3,500-plus.
- Last week, 1,647 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,478 pages the previous week.
- Currently at 39,905 pages, the 2015 Federal Register is on pace for 75,578 pages.
- Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Fifteen such rules have been published so far this year, one in the past week.
- The total estimated compliance cost of 2015’s economically significant regulations ranges from $1.16 billion to $1.25 billion for the current year.
- 138 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
- So far in 2015, 281 new rules affect small businesses; 43 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- A The FDA is delaying its calorie-count regulations for restaurants and grocery stores until after the 2016 election.
- Sanctions against Venezuela.
- A new FCC regulation will make “emergency information in video programming accessible to individuals who are blind or visually impaired.”
- 21 new Coast Guard regulations, mostly establishing safety zones for fireworks shows and scheduling when drawbridges go up and down.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.