Another Week, Another 65 New Regulations

Another Week, Another 65 New Regulations

As the Federal Register climbed above 87,000 pages for the first time in its 81-year history, agencies issued new rules ranging from landfills to movie theaters.

On to the data:

• Last week, 65 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 85 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 35 minutes.
• With 3,454 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,722 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
• Last week, 2,006 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 2,292 pages the previous week.
• Currently at 87,297 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 94,071 pages. This would exceed the 2010 Federal Register’s previous 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. 30 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 $23.5 billion to $36.2 billion.
• 277 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
• So far in 2016, 580 new rules affect small businesses; 99 of them are classified as significant.

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• The federal government charges a fee to everyone who flies through U.S. airspace, even if their flights neither take off nor land on American soil. A new rule updates those fees.
• Another type of opiate is being classified as a Schedule I controlled substance, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s most severe category.
• A new Medicaid rule will increase state and federal spending by a combined $191 million in 2016, and $209 in 2017.
• The Environmental Protection Agency is implementing new reporting requirements for greenhouse gas emissions for petroleum and natural gas systems. The estimated cost is roughly $110,000 per year.
• Washington State requires permits for landfills. The EPA has determined that the state’s policies are “adequate.”
• Closed captioning in movie theaters.
• Two new regulations related to the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill

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

This first appeared at Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Ryan Young

Ryan Young is the Competitive Enterprise Institute's fellow focusing on regulatory and monetary policy and financial regulation. He also hosts CEI’s weekly podcast and writes the popular “Regulation of the Day.”

Source: Another Week, Another 65 New Regulations | Foundation for Economic Education