CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week In Regulation

This week in the world of regulation:

  • Last week, 61 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. This is down from 70 new final rules the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and 46 minutes — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
  • All in all, 321 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
  • If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,004 new final rules.
  • Last week, 1,931 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 9,559 pages.
  • At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 88,510 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 seven so far in 2013.
  • The total compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $2.518 billion to $4.768 billion.
  • So far, 30 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
  • So far this year, 59 final rules affect small business; 7 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

  • One of last week’s two economically significant rules comes from the Rural Utilities Service. The agency plans to expand broadband Internet access in rural areas by guaranteeing loans. No expected cost is given, though the rule is quick to trumpet its expected benefits.
  • The other economically significant rule comes from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicaid Services. It involves children’s health insurance, transparency reports, and financial disclosures for physicians. Despite acknowledging “a substantial amount of uncertainty in these [cost] estimates,” the rule nevertheless estimates its first-year labor costs to the nearest dollar: $193,037,104.
  • If you grow tomatoes in Florida, the Agricultural Marketing Service will now charge you 2.4 cents per 25-pound carton, down from 3.7 cents.
  • If you were planning on exporting nuclear materials to South Sudan, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would rather you didn’t.
  • There are new official winemaking regions in Oregon and Indiana.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.