CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

The 2016 Federal Register will surpass 40,000 pages next week, and is on pace to exceed 85,000 pages for the first time in its 80-year history. New rules range from Christmas trees to the Bacon Island drawbridge.

On to the data:

• Last week, 93 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 97 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every one hour and 49 minutes.
• With 1,595 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,408 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
• Last week, 1,802 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,920 pages the previous week.
• Currently at 39,806 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 85,056 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. 16 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 $3.70 billion to $5.62 billion.
• 128 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
• So far in 2016, 315 new rules affect small businesses; 46 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• Updated list of regulated articles regarding the Asian longhorned beetle.
• New federal regulations for tart cherries grown in Michigan, “et al.”
• Relaxed grapefruit containers, but only in southern Texas.
• An avocado tax increase, but only for south Florida growers.
• The federal government has a Christmas Tree Promotion Board. It has a new rule on how it treats delinquent taxpayers.
• 153 spearmint oil regulations since 1994. The latest is here.
• There is a drawbridge connecting Jones Tract, California to Bacon Island. A new federal regulation determines when that drawbridge goes up and down.
• Energy conservation standards for battery chargers.
• An economically significant rule for dehumidifier energy conservation standards. Its estimated annual costs range from $110 million to $190 million. Estimated benefits range from $2.0 billion to $3.6 billion—an 18- to 19-fold difference. I wrote a bit more about these impressive returns here.

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