This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

Agencies issued more than six dozen new final regulations last week, ranging from minerals to dates. Meanwhile, this year’s Federal Register, the 81st edition, is now in the top 20 in all-time page counts, and it’s still September.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 73 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 78 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 18 minutes.
  • With 2,732 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,692 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
  • Last week, 1,801 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,444 pages the previous week.
  • Currently at 65,765 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 88,872 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.
  • 207 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
  • So far in 2016, 479 new rules affect small businesses; 79 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.