CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

Maybe the recently-passed Congressional Review Act deadline I wrote about previously hasn’t had much effect on midnight regulators. The Federal Register once again topped 2,000 pages last week, and included a year-high 137 final regulations, ranging from eggs to groupers.

On to the data:

• Last week, 137 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 77 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every one hour and 14 minutes.
• With 1,809 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,561 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
• Last week, 2,051 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,343 pages the previous week.
• Currently at 43,200 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 85,001 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. 19 such rules have been published so far in 2016, two in the last week.
• The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations ranges from $3.82 billion to $6.02 billion.
• 140 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
• So far in 2016, 340 new rules affect small businesses; 53 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• Dodd-Frank-related record keeping requirements for the FDIC regarding its member banks.
• Additives for animal feed.
• 152 pages of regulations for drones. This rule is economically significant, with 2016 costs ranging from $25.87 million to $302.72 million. The difference, which is more than an order of magnitude, is the FAA’s way of saying “we have no idea what this thing will cost.” The decimal points show a sense of humor, and little else. Total estimated costs from 2016-2020 range from $413.15 million to $2.63112 billion; the same caveats apply.
• If you make things with eggs and export them, you can now submit your required paperwork electronically. Welcome to the current century, Food Safety and Inspection Service.
• An energy conservation program for battery chargers, which are themselves intended to conserve energy.
• The Nassau grouper is now a threatened species.
• Mementos on the International Space Station.
• Another rule for preventing collisions at sea.
• Just in case compact fluorescent light manufacturers feel threatened by competition, the Energy Department issued a new testing rule for LED lights.
• Fire safety requirements for buildings which house Medicare beneficiaries.

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