CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

As it zoomed past the 45,000-page mark, the 2015 Federal Register saw new regulations covering everything from space particles to raspberries.

On to the data:

• Last week, 71 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 74 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 22 minutes.
• So far in 2015, 1,946 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 3,201 new regulations this year, which would be several hundred fewer rules than the usual total of 3,500-plus.
• Last week, 1,586 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,540 pages the previous week.
• Currently at 45,795 pages, the 2015 Federal Register is on pace for 77,882 pages.
• 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, three in the past week.
• The total estimated compliance cost of 2015’s economically significant regulations ranges from $1.32 billion to $1.41 billion for the current year.
• 165 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
• So far in 2015, 331 new rules affect small businesses; 51 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• A new economically significant Medicare regulation, which is updated annually, will increase government spending by an estimated $430 million compared to last year. Since this is spending and not compliance costs, I am scoring this rule as zero-cost in our running compliance cost tally.
• Ditto with a second annually-updated economically significant Medicare regulation, which will increase government spending in 2016 by an estimated $160 million.
• And a third economically significant Medicare regulation will increase next year’s government spending by an estimated $135 million.
• Sanctions against Russian oil reserves.
• The federal government now officially recognizes the Squaw Valley-Miramonte viticultural area.
• A Pandemic Influenza Countermeasures Injury Table.
• The Georgetown salamander is now an endangered species. They are sometimes confused for members of Congress who come from old money, and will receive designated critical habitat in the near future.
• Processed raspberry research.
• Energy efficiency tests for washing machines.
• Duty-free entry for particles from space. See also this related post from CEI’s archives.

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