CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

It was a short work week in Washington due to George Washington’s Birthday, also known as President’s Day. Even so, federal agencies still published new regulations covering everything from poles to cypress trees.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 45 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 56 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every three hours and 44 minutes.
  • With 376 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 2,848 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
  • Last week, 940 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,281 pages the previous week.
  • Currently at 8,621 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 65,311 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, none in the last week.
  • The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations ranges from $402 million to $1.24 billion.
  • 43 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
  • So far in 2016, 76 new rules affect small businesses; 18 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

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