CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

As the Federal Register passed the 25,000-page mark, new rules for the week ranged from fluorescent lamps to disaffected youth.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 65 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 53 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 35 minutes.
  • With 1,077 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,244 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
  • Last week, 2,035 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,496 pages the previous week.
  • Currently at 26,003 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 78,323 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. Eight 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 $729 million to $1.56 billion.
  • 85 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
  • So far in 2016, 203 new rules affect small businesses; 30 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.