CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
This week in the world of regulation:
- Last week, 93 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. This is up from 72 new final rules the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every hour and 48 minutes — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
- All in all, 1,592 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
- If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,522 new final rules.
- Last week, 1,536 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 36,027 pages.
- At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 78,320 pages.
- Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. No such rules were published for the third consecutive week, for a total of 13 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, 109 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
- So far this year, 291 final rules affect small business; 26 of them are significant rules.
Highlights from final rules published last week:
- The federal government is altering drawbridge schedules in New York City; Boston; Stillwater, Minnesota; Westport, Connecticut; Stockton, California; Norfolk, Virginia; and Lawrence, New York.
- If you make alcoholic beverages between 18 and 23 percent alcohol by volume and contain artificial coloring, you should be aware of this regulation.
- The Affordable Care Act contains an excise tax on tanning. It came into effect on Tuesday.
- The EPA is revising its “approved motor vehicle emissions budgets” for Lima, Ohio.
- The EPA is also revising its ambient air quality standards for Northern Virginia.
- A new FCC rule takes seven pages to define “auditory assistance device.”
- Not to be outdone, the FDIC takes 26 pages to define “Predominantly engaged in activities that are financial in nature or incidental thereto.”
- Winemakers may now print a wine’s alcohol content on a label other than the brand label if they wish.
For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.