This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
As the Obama administration heads into its home stretch, agencies passed new rules ranging from gloves to canned vegetables.
On to the data:
- Last week, 130 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 86 the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every one hour and 18 minutes.
- With 3,756 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,817 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
- Last week, 3,264 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 2,284 pages the previous week.
- Currently at 94,907 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 96,060 pages. This well exceeds the 2010 Federal Register’s previous 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. 34 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 $24.1 billion to $37.1 billion.
- 311 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
- So far in 2016, 614 new rules affect small businesses; 105 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- A tax increase for almonds. And cherries.
- Meanwhile, the California Date Administrative Committee is lowering its tax on date growers.
- New food labeling requirements for meat and poultry will come into effect on January 1, 2020.
- A ban on the powder on surgeon’s gloves.
- Children’s hospital beds.
- Air quality in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
- U.S. Customs Form I-94 has been in use for about 50 years, and is now available in electronic format.
- Coal mining.
- A rule for promoting the SNAP Program.
- Argentinian lemons.
- Iranian sanctions.
- Revised grading standards for canned vegetables.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.