This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
As summer marches on, regulatory agencies issued more than 60 new regulations in the last week, ranging from students’ financial accounts to walnut growers.
On to the data:
- Last week, 61 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 68 the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 45 minutes.
- Federal agencies have issued 1,738 final regulations in 2017. At that pace, there will be 3,126 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,853 regulations.
- Last week, 1,636 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 896 pages the previous week.
- The 2017 Federal Register totals 34,243 pages. It is on pace for 61,589 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. Nine 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 156 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
- In 2017, 335 new rules affected small businesses; 50 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- Disclosure requirements for students’ financial accounts.
- The Environmental Protection Agency has issued Determination 33.
- A tax cut for walnut growers in California.
- Rules of conduct for postal employees.
- A surprising temporary liberalization of H-2B visa limits, at least for non-farm workers.
- A change in the enrollment fee to become an IRS agent.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.