CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Congress is on its August recess, but agencies stayed busy with more than 2,000 Federal Register pages, 51 proposed regulations, and nearly 100 final regulations ranging from Tunisian loans to vending machines.
On to the data:
- Last week, 97 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 70 the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every one hour and 44 minutes.
- With 2,173 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,598 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
- Last week, 2,038 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,965 pages the previous week.
- Currently at 52,251 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 86,509 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. 21 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 $3.92 billion to $6.12 billion.
- 168 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
- So far in 2016, 393 new rules affect small businesses; 63 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- Requirements for handling peanuts.
- Cotton imports.
- Grading fruits, vegetables, and nuts.
- The marbleled murrelet is getting nearly 3.7 million acres of critical habitat.
- Loan guarantees to Tunisia.
- The rule for calorie labeling of vending machine foods has been delayed until July 26, 2018.
- Three species of angel sharks are now listed as endangered.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.