CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week In Regulation

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 69 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. This is down from 74 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 26 minutes — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• All in all, 607 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2013 will be 3,307 new final rules.
• Last week, 1,275 new pages were added to the 2013 Federal Register, for a total of 15,251 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2013 Federal Register will run 82,886 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. One such rule were published last week, for a total of 10 so far in 2013.
• The total compliance costs of this year’s economically significant regulations ranges from $2.632 billion to $4.910 billion.
• So far, 56 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2013.
• So far this year, 107 final rules affect small business; 15 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• This week’s economically significant rule increases Medicare spending by $2.54 billion. Since this is government spending and not compliance costs, I am scoring it as zero-cost on our running compliance cost tally.
• New grading standards for almonds in the shell.
• The federal government regulates the liability an airline faces if it loses your luggage. Effective June 6, the limit is being raised from $3,300 to $3,400 to account for inflation since 2008.
• Speaking of aviation, the FAA issued 22 new final rules.
• If you were thinking of fishing for gray triggerfish in the Gulf of Mexico, you should read this new regulation.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.