CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The week ended with precisely 800 new final regulations on the year, with new rules covering everything from chairs to obesity.
On to the data:
- Last week, 92 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 53 the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every one hour and 49 minutes.
- With 800 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,175 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
- Last week, 1,958 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 2,109 pages the previous week.
- Currently at 18,987 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 75,346 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. Seven 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 $629 million to $1.46 billion.
- 68 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
- So far in 2016, 149 new rules affect small businesses; 23 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- The Foreign Assets Control Office is loosening some of its regulations for highly enriched uranium.
- The African coelacanth is now a threatened species.
- Safety standards for portable hook-on chairs for small children.
- The IRS issued a correction regarding its tax treatment of cafeteria plans.
- This year’s batch of migratory bird hunting regulations is underway.
- Obesity education for food-stamp recipients.
- If you are a foreigner and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission wants your fingerprints, it is allowed to use other identification methods.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.