CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 80 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. There were 71 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and six minutes — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• All in all, 2,394 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,718 new final rules.
• Last week, 2,364 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 52,494 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 80,022 pages, which would be good for third 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. One such rule was published last week, for a total of 23 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, 210 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
• So far this year, 449 final rules affect small business; 58 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• This week’s economically significant rule comes from the Fish and Wildlife Service. It estimates that this year’s batch of migratory bird hunting regulations will produce a consumer surplus in the curiously precise range of $317.8 to $416.8 million. As usual, there is no analysis of compliance costs, so I am scoring this rule as zero-cost in the running compliance cost tally.
• The FDA issued a correction of an earlier regulation involving adhesives and coating components of indirect food additives.
• The FCC is changing its fee structures so it can meet its target of fining businesses and consumers $339,844,000.
• If you grow Valencia oranges or avocados in Florida, the Agricultural Marketing is liberalizing its size and grading requirements.
• Want to make a movie on government-owned land? Read this first.
• New safety standards for play yards.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.