By Ryan Young
It may not feel like spring yet, but regulatory agencies have turned their fancies to rulemaking, with 45 proposed and 70 final regulations ranging from the size of oranges to yellow lances.
On to the data:
- Last week, 70 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 63 the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 24 minutes.
- Federal agencies have issued 825 final regulations in 2017. At that pace, there will be 3,079 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,281 regulations.
- Last week, 1,202 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 964 pages the previous week.
- The 2018 Federal Register totals 15,374 pages. It is on pace for 57,366 pages. The all-time record adjusted page count (which subtracts skips, jumps, and blank pages) is 96,994, set in 2016.
- Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. One such rule has been published this year, none in the last week.
- The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations is $115 million.
- Agencies have published 24 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
- In 2018, 130 new rules affected small businesses; 7 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- Labeling requirements for products that use energy and water.
- Military support for civilian law enforcement. What could possibly go wrong?
- Organic dairy products.
- Size requirements for oranges.
- Cranberry quotas to “adjust supply to more closely meet market demand,” something faster, easier, and cheaper by the price system.
- The U.S. Postal Service has a Green and Secure Program.
- The yellow lance, a type of mussel, is now a threatened species.
- So is the Louisiana pinesnake.
- Importing lemons from Chile.
Reprinted from Competitive Enterprise Institute and sourced from FEE.org
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.”
Wow! What an important job they have….
I spose ww3 & the such just pales in comparison to this very important duty.
Here here Waz. I would like to be paid to sit around and think shit up. Time to put in an app in State or private ‘think tanks’ methinks. I just thought of something, I need to check my bank account to see if I DID get paid for thinking. Twice.
Yayyyy! More rules, regulations, policies, amendments, laws, etc. By my estimation, that is nearly enough. Just 2,000? Wtf? Our ‘leaders’ are becoming incompetently lazy it appears. Those prior mentioned blah blahs should be AT LEAST double that. We cannot be safe, secure, independent, autonomous, democratically republic, with so few blah blahs. No I am afraid. Now I cannot go outside, hell, even think! Not enough protection(s) by far. The kakistocracy needs to amp it up. And fast! Get those cranberry people in line! And yes, the size of oranges, I mean the universe depends upon it! More please. And there aren’t enough IoT-5G towers, and interconnect cameras and biometric readers. C’mon now our proxy fearless saviors! I need to write my Congress man and woman. This is ridiculous all this unsafety and nonsecurity!