CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 64 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. This is up from 62 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 38 minutes — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• All in all, 1,227 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,445 new final rules.
• Last week, 1,621 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 27,811 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 76,404 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. For the third week in a row, no such rules were published last week, for a total of 12 so far in 2013.
• The total estimated compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $5.58 billion to $10.19 billion.
• So far, 88 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
• So far this year, 228 final rules affect small business; 21 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• The Coast Guard regulates when a drawbridge in Nassau, New York goes up and down; local authorities must not be up to the task.
• The IRS has updated its information reporting requirements for employers.
• The EPA has issued new air quality plans for Texas (here and here), Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana, West Virginia, North Carolina, and Alaska.
• New irradiation rules for animal feed and pet food.
• The Postal Regulatory Commission is changing its official seal. Click here to see what it looks like.
• Lorcaserin, a weight-loss drug with the trade name Belviq, is now a Schedule IV controlled substance.
• The Small Business Administration has removed size requirements for contracts that small businesses owned by women may bid for.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.