This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

The Federal Register will crack the 70,000-page barrier early this week. New rules found in last week’s 2,000-plus pages range from foreign cars to beetles.

On to the data:

• Last week, 69 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 116 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 26 minutes.
• With 2,917 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,740 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
• Last week, 2,096 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 2,047 pages the previous week.
• Currently at 69,779 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 89,461 pages. This would exceed the 2010 Federal Register’s all-time record adjusted page count of 81,405.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. 26 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 $4.52 billion to $6.72 billion.
• 220 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
• So far in 2016, 505 new rules affect small businesses; 87 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• A new Medicare rule for long-term care is 185 pages long.
• The Kentucky arrow darter, a small fish, is now a threatened species. It is also being given 248 miles of river as a designated critical habitat.
• The Miami tiger beetle, thought to be extinct, is in fact alive, and is now an endangered species—complicating development plans in Palm Beach County.
• A list of foreign vehicles that don’t necessarily meet federal safety standards, but are allowed to be imported anyway. The list mainly covers motorcycles, sports cars, truck trailers (often used in international shipping), and right-hand drive vehicles typically used in countries where motorists drive on the left side of the road.
• The FDA is attempting to reduce the amount of time it takes to approve new drugs. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
• The Suwannee moccasinshell,  type of mussel, is now a threatened species.

For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.