CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, which was a four-day week because of the Labor Day holiday, 58 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. There were 81 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 54 minutes — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• All in all, 2,533 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,713 new final rules.
• Last week, 809 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 54,768 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 79,145 pages, which would be good for fourth all time. The current record is 81,405 pages, set in 2010. Three of the top four years have occurred since 2008.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. No such rules were published last week, for a total of 26 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, 220 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
• So far this year, 483 final rules affect small business; 64 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• U.S. Customs and Border Protection has extended the boundaries of the port in Indianapolis, Ind.
• When you go shopping for appliances, you’ll see stickers on them showing a unit’s estimated annual energy costs. That label is required by the Federal Trade Commission, which just issued a correction to a recent revision to the label’s requirements.
• If you claim foreign tax credits, the IRS has issued new rules for how that affects your U.S. tax situation.
• Date growers in Riverside County, Calif. (but not elsewhere) will now enjoy a lower assessment rate from the Agricultural Marketing Service.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.