This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

It was another slow week for new regulations, but busy times are on their way. A slew of delayed regulations will come into effect on March 21, mostly with few or no alterations. Congress is also reclaiming its legislative responsibilities via the Congressional Review Act, striking down several executive branch rules rules it never legislated. New regulations that did come out in the last week range from AM radio to halibut.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 39 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 59 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every four hours and 19 minutes.
  • Federal agencies have issued 546 final regulations in 2017. At that pace, there will be 2,967 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,616 regulations.
  • Last week, 875 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 713 pages the previous week.
  • The 2017 Federal Register totals 13,377 pages. It is on pace for 72,702 pages. The all-time record adjusted page count (which subtracts skips, jumps, and blank pages) is 96,994, set last year. The unadjusted count was 97,110 pages.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Seven such rules have been published this year, none in the last week.
  • The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations ranges from $6.8 billion to $13.2 billion.
  • Agencies have published 91 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
  • In 2017, 129 new rules affected small businesses; 30 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.