CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 83 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. There were 82 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and 1 minute — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• All in all, 2,243 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,705 new final rules.
• Last week, 1,639 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 48,716 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 79,085 pages, which would be good for fourth all time. The current record is 81,405 pages, set in 2010.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Five such rules were published last week, for a total of 22 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, 197 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
• So far this year, 414 final rules affect small business; 54 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• The five economically significant rules published last week are the most in a long time. Tellingly, none of them say anything about compliance costs, so our running compliance cost tally remains unchanged. They do, however, affect government spending. Each of those rules, in turn:
• The Education Department’s Race to the Top—District program revisions will increase its spending by $120 million per year.
• Three changes to the Medicare program will cost $470 million, $170 million, and $160 million in FY 2014 spending.
• Changes to the Defense Department’s hospital reimbursement regulations will save an estimated $676.1 million in spending from FY 2013-2017.
• Moving on to non-economically significant rules, if you grow sweet cherries and/or Irish potatoes in certain parts of Washington State, the Agricultural Marketing Service is lowering the assessment rate it charges on your crop.
• The EPA approved or disapproved of state-level air quality regulations in Alaska, Utah, Texas, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Montana.
• The Transportation Department is eliminating its advisory committee regulations “because they have been made obsolete by other laws, regulations, and agency procedures.”
• The FDA published a 26-page rule defining the term “gluten-free” and establishing related food labeling regulations.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.