This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
America celebrated its 242nd birthday on Wednesday, and new tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods came into effect on Friday. Meanwhile, during a four-day work week, regulators added new rules ranging from documenting non-immigrants to loan seasoning.
On to the data:
- Last week, 64 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 96 the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 38 minutes.
- Federal agencies have issued 1,731 final regulations in 2018. At that pace, there will be 3,329 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,236 regulations.
- Last week, 809 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,393 pages the previous week.
- The 2018 Federal Register totals 31,582 pages. It is on pace for 60,735 pages. The all-time record adjusted page count (which subtracts skips, jumps, and blank pages) is 96,994, set in 2016.
- Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Three such rules have been published this year, none in the last week.
- The running compliance cost tally for 2018’s economically significant regulations is $319.1 million.
- Agencies have published 61 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
- In 2018, 281 new rules affect small businesses; 16 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- Safety standards for booster seats.
- How to bring charges against representatives of the Social Security Administration.
- Loan seasoning.
- Revising the beryllium standard.
- The 574th regulation since 1994 for preventing collisions at sea.
- Non-public information.
- Documentation of Nonimmigrants Under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
- Reducing visas for people from Caribbean countries.
- Country of origin labeling for packed honey.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.