This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

Agencies issued 78 new regulations last week, ranging from cherries to dairy.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 78 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 65 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 10 minutes.
  • With 2,659 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,693 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
  • Last week, 1,444 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,504 pages the previous week.
  • Currently at 63,964 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 88,839 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. 25 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 $4.42 billion to $6.62 billion.
  • 204 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
  • So far in 2016, 472 new rules affect small businesses; 78 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.