This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

The Federal Register continued its record pace last week, with Friday’s edition alone having 1,177 pages. The 2016 incarnation is already the seventh-largest of all time, dating back to 1936. The new record may well be set in the next two weeks, especially if there is a midnight rush after the election. New rules for the week range from luggage to coelacanths.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 71 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 62 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 22 minutes.
  • With 3,198 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,736 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
  • Last week, 2,704 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 2,299 pages the previous week.
  • Currently at 78,017 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 91,142 pages. This would exceed the 2010 Federal Register’s all-time record adjusted page count of 81,405.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. 29 such rules have been published so far in 2016, none in the last week.
  • The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations ranges from $23.5 billion to $36.2 billion.
  • 250 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
  • So far in 2016, 546 new rules affect small businesses; 94 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

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