CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

by Ryan Young on July 8, 2013

This week in the world of regulation:

·         Last week, 78 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, despite the July 4th holiday. There were 80 new final rules the previous week.

·         That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and nine minutes — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

·         All in all, 1,846 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.

·         If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,623 new final rules.

·         Last week, 1,461 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 40,565 pages.

·         At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 78,615 pages.

·         Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. One such rule was published last week, for a total of 16 so far in 2013.

·         The total estimated compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $5.78 billion to $10.39 billion.

·         So far, 130 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.

·         So far this year, 312 final rules affect small business; 28 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week: