CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The big regulatory news this week is the Supreme Court’s decision to delay the EPA’s big power plant emission regulation. Other than that, agencies issued 56 new final regulations covering everything from train windows to foreign cotton.
On to the data:
- Last week, 56 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 58 the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation precisely every three hours.
- With 331 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 2,853 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
- Last week, 1,281 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,371 pages the previous week.
- Currently at 7,681 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 66,216 pages. The 2015 Federal Register had an adjusted page count of 81,611.
- 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 in 2016, one in the last week.
- The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations ranges from $402 million to $1.24 billion.
- To date, 39 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
- So far in 2016, 68 new rules affect small businesses; 17 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- In a welcome bit of attic-cleaning, the FDA is “removing two regulations that prescribe procedures for FDA's review and classification of biological products licensed before July 1, 1972.”
- From the FCC, Broadcast Licensee-Conducted Contests.
- Medicare overpayment rules.
- Fire safety rules for things the Agriculture Department buys.
- The U.S. Postal Service has its own system of judges and courts. Here is a rule for its judicial officer.
- A seven-page definition for “foreign-growth cotton.”
- Federal regulations for windows on trains.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.