CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week In Regulation

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 70 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. This is up from 56 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 24 minutes — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• All in all, 260 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 2,966 new final rules.
• Last week, 1,931 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 7,628 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 86,591 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. One such rule was published last week, for a total 5 so far in 2013.
• The total compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $2.325 billion to $4.575 billion.
• So far, 19 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
• So far this year, 47 final rules affect small business; 4 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• This week’s economically significant rule comes from the EPA. It sets pollution standards for large-scale boilers at a cost of $1.4 billion to $1.6 billion per year.
• The IRS enacted a health insurance premium tax credit, as required by the health care bill.
• If you fish for king mackerel off of Florida’s east coast, your catch limit has been increased to 75 fish.
• The Coast Guard is changing its vessel identification system and its boating accident report database.
• The Interior Department has revised its Freedom of Information Act regulations.
• U.S. Customs and Border Protection confiscates a lot of property. It is now building a  public website to advertise and keep better keep track of its takings.
• Airplane bathrooms are now required to have built-in oxygen masks that will drop down in the event of sudden cabin pressure change. Now you’ll have oxygen even if nature calls at a particularly bad time.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.