CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

The number of new regulations for the year exceeded the 1,500 mark last week, with new rules covering everything from seatbelts to suckerfish.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 97 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 61 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every one hour and 44 minutes.
  • With 1,502 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,283 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
  • Last week, 1,920 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,895 pages the previous week.
  • Currently at 38,004 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 84,831 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. 15 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 $3.59 billion to $5.43 billion.
  • 123 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
  • So far in 2016, 297 new rules affect small businesses; 45 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.