CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week In Regulation

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 54 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. This is up from 52 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation precisely every 3 hours and 7 minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• All in all, 134 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 2,717 new final rules.
• Last week, 1,676 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 4,286 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 82,424 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Two such rules were published last week, for a total of three so far in 2013.
• The total compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $811 million to $2.75 billion.
• So far, 11 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
• So far this year, 29 final rules affect small business; one of them is a significant rule.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• One of last week’s economically significant rules comes from the EPA. It sets air quality standards for particulate matter. Depending on how strict the standard is set and what methodology one uses, the rule’s cost in the year 2020 could be as little as $11 million, or as high as $1.7 billion. The fact that the given range is more than a hundredfold says much about the precision of regulatory cost estimates.
• The other economically significant rule comes from the Patent and Trademark Office. It is adjusting the fees it charges patent applicants, and is working to shorten the patent-issuing process. It estimates the cost of this rule to be $800 million.
• The Department of Energy has issued new testing procedures for microwave oven energy efficiency.
• The prolific FAA issued nine final rules this week, making for 32 on the year as of January 18.
• HUD published new standards for roof trusses in manufactured homes.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.