This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

The 2016 Federal Register broke the 60,000-page mark last week, and became the 25th-largest edition in the Register’s 81-year history before Labor Day. New rules for the week ranged from windshields to landfills.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 87 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 101 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every one hour and 56 minutes.
  • With 2,516 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,678 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
  • Last week, 1,977 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 2,647 pages the previous week.
  • Currently at 61,016 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 89,205 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. 24 such rules have been published so far in 2016, two in the last week.
  • The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations ranges from $4.05 billion to $6.25 billion.
  • 193 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
  • So far in 2016, 448 new rules affect small businesses; 75 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.