CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

by Ryan Young on September 16, 2013 · 0 comments

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 61 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. There were 58 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and 45 minutes — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• All in all, 2,594 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,698 new final rules.
• Last week, 1,849 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 56,617 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 79,518 pages, which would be good for third all time. The current record is 81,405 pages, set in 2010.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. No such rules were published last week, for a total of 26 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, 224 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
• So far this year, 497 final rules affect small business; 66 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week: