This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

In one of their busiest weeks to date, agencies passed more than a hundred new regulations covering everything from rubies to frogs. Look for the 2016 Federal Register to pass 60,000 pages this week as it continues its record pace.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 101 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 67 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every one hour and 40 minutes.
  • With 2,429 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,658 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
  • Last week, 2,647 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 2,560 pages the previous week.
  • Currently at 59,039 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 88,915 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. 22 such rules have been published so far in 2016, one in the last week.
  • The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations ranges from $3.99 billion to $6.19 billion.
  • 185 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
  • So far in 2016, 430 new rules affect small businesses; 71 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.