CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

This week in the world of regulation:

  • Last week, 68 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. There were 84 new final rules the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 28 minutes — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
  • All in all, 1,998 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
  • If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,646 new final rules.
  • Last week, 1,750 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 43,686 pages.
  • At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 78,572 pages.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. One such published last week, for a total of 17 so far in 2013.
  • The total estimated compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $5.78 billion to $10.39 billion.
  • So far, 138 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
  • So far this year, 333 final rules affect small business; 30 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

  • Last week’s economically significant regulation comes courtesy of the Affordable Care Act. By changing eligibility requirements for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the federal government hopes to save $465 million in spending over five years. The rule contains nary a word about compliance costs, so I am scoring this rule as zero-cost in our running compliance cost tally.
  • The Topeka shiner is a federally endangered fish. The biggest ones are a few inches long. The Fish and Wildlife Service is establishing a “nonessential experimental population” of them in northern Missouri.
  • Just in time for a record-breaking summer heat wave, the Energy Department issued new energy conservation standards for room air conditioners. The rule also affects clothes dryers.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.