This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

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It was a short work week due to Veterans Day, as most Americans took time to reflect on the centenary of the World War I armistice. Readers interested in learning more about that terrible war can turn to Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August, Adam Hochschild’s To End All Wars, or literature from the period such as Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Wilfred Owen’s War Poems. Owen, a soldier and a poet, was killed days before the armistice. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging from RVs to commercial hogfish fishing.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 40 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 54 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every four hours and 12 minutes.
  • Federal agencies have issued 2,926 final regulations in 2018. At that pace, there will be 3,296 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,236 regulations.
  • Last week, 1,619 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,007 pages the previous week.
  • The 2018 Federal Register totals 58,174 pages. It is on pace for 65,512 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. Five such rules have been published this year, none in the last week.
  • The running compliance cost tally for 2018’s economically significant regulations is a net savings ranging from $348.9 million to $560.9 million.
  • Agencies have published 96 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
  • So far in 2018, 559 new rules affect small businesses; 23 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.