This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Congress remains on its August recess, and agencies remain busy, with the 2016 Federal Register remaining on its record pace. New rules from the last week range from poultry improvement to nuclear philosophy.
On to the data:
- Last week, 88 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 97 the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every one hour and 55 minutes.
- With 2,261 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,623 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
- Last week, 1,581 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 2,038 pages the previous week.
- Currently at 53,832 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 86,270 pages. This would exceed the 2015 Federal Register’s all-time record adjusted page count of 81,611.
- Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. 21 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 $3.92 billion to $6.12 billion.
- 171 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
- So far in 2016, 403 new rules affect small businesses; 65 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- Reporting requirements for pigs and lambs.
- A philosophy for keeping radiation low at nuclear power plants.
- The Pittsburgh Steelers held a fireworks show on Friday at their preseason game. The Coast Guard regulated it.
- Revisions to the federal government’s National Dairy Promotion and Research Program.
- Auxiliary provisions for the federal government’s National Poultry Improvement Plan.
- Readers above a certain age will remember being annoyed by the FCC’s emergency alert tests during Saturday morning cartoons. Unlike those cartoons, they still exist.
- Good news: three species of fox are being removed from the endangered species list, and a fourth is being upgraded from endangered to threatened.
- If you grow citrus fruit in Texas, the federal government has a recently corrected program for you.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.