CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

As mentioned earlier, something of a regulatory midnight rush is happening right now. The Federal Register topped 2,000 pages for the third time in four weeks—a rare accomplishment. It is now on pace to break last year’s all-time record. New rules range from flight simulators to the EPA’s in-house rules for corporate handouts.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 68 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 58 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 28 minutes.
  • With 1,274 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,250 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
  • Last week, 2,065 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 2,170 pages the previous week.
  • Currently at 32,131 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 81,967 pages. This would exceed the 2015 Federal Register’s all-time record adjusted page count of 81,611.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. 11 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 $1.21 billion to $2.20 billion.
  • 105 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
  • So far in 2016, 250 new rules affect small businesses; 40 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.