CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week In Regulation

This week in the world of regulation:

• It was a short week due to the Christmas holiday, but agencies still found time to publish 54 final rules in three working days. This is down from 68 rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 3 hours and 7 minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• All in all, 3,685 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2012 will be 3,715 new rules.
• Last week, 984 new pages were added to the 2012 Federal Register, for a total of 76,434 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2012 Federal Register will run 76,741 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. The 46 such rules published so far in 2012 have compliance costs of at least $24 billion. Two of the rules do not have cost estimates, and two other rules have cost estimates that do not give a total annual cost. We assume that rules lacking this basic transparency measure cost the bare minimum of $100 million per year. The true cost is almost certainly higher.
• No economically significant rules were published last week.
• So far, 345 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2012.
• So far this year, 692 final rules affect small business; 96 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• The Agricultural Marketing Service has revised its spearmint oil handling regulations.
• The Department of Homeland Security has two new rules revising its procedures for granting asylum.
• The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a rule on its rulemaking procedures.
• The federal government continues present regulation of the railroad industry’s employee drug testing policies.
• If you’re a commercial shark fisherman, you should be aware of this new regulation.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.