CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

Since Congress and the president reached a deal on the debt ceiling, this is the second and final special shutdown edition of the Battered Business Bureau. This week’s was the smallest Federal Register this analyst has ever seen, with a grand total of three rules and 60 pages. Thursday’s edition was just five pages long, the lowest total of the entire shutdown.

The post-shutdown deluge of rules likely will begin on either Monday or Tuesday. Expect to see very different numbers in next week’s edition.

On to the data.

Last week, three new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. There were six new final rules the previous week.

  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 56 hours.
  • All in all, 2,872 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
  • If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,602 new final rules. Keep in mind the shutdown is artificially lowering this projection; it was 3,687 last week. It should be back to its usual 3,700+ range after next week.
  • Last week, 60 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 62,150 pages.
  • At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 76,918 pages, which would be good for fifth all time – keep in mind, though, the light shutdown week artificially lowers this projection. The actual page count will likely be much closer to 80,000. 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. No such rules were published last week, leaving the total at 34 so far in 2013.
  • The total estimated compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $6.53 billion to $11.93 billion.
  • So far, 258 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
  • So far this year, 550 final rules affect small business; 75 of them are significant rules.

Instead of the usual highlights from selected final rules, here are all of them, since there were only three:

The Coast Guard a established temporary safety zone in the Tennessee River near Florence, Ala., for a boat race, and another one for a fireworks show in Oyster Bay, N.Y.

For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.