Federal Register Hits 4th Highest Ever Count, Will Top 80,000 Pages Tuesday

Yesterday the Federal Register hit its fifth-highest count of 79,380 pages.

Today is Veterans Day and the federal government is closed. But before bureaucrats commuted back to the suburbs, they managed to tee up the Monday, November 14 edition.

It appeared this morning. The new installment, 609 pages long, now brings the Register to 79,990 pages for the year.

That brings the 2016 Register to the fourth-highest count of all time.

This may be seen in the chart below. The Federal Register will clearly top 80,000 pages on Tuesday the 15th, and top the all-time high only a few days later. Incredibly, a month and a half remain in this record-setting year.

As we said earlier, this all calls for a countdown. Each time that the Obama 2016 Federal Register count notches itself up the Top 15 countdown, we’ve posted a new chart and will continue to do so.

The next milestone is 80,260, which, at a pace of well over 1,000 pages weekly, could very well happen on Tuesday. Barring some pullback it is now clear that the all-time record will be passed before Thanksgiving.

Some notables here:

  • While the highest count ever was Barack Obama’s 81,405 pages in 2010, clearly this figure will easily be surpassed—we were conservatively saying before December, but now it will be before Thanksgiving.
  • When all is said and done, of all the Top Ten counts, seven of them are going to belong to President Obama.
  • High counts appearing for prior presidents are Bush (79,435); Clinton (74,258); Carter (73,258).