Regulators continued their run of billion-dollar weeks, publishing $1.3 billion in total costs. Annualized burdens narrowly edged benefits: $348 million to $324 million; paperwork grew by more than 3.3 million hours. An emergency preparedness requirement for Medicare and Medicaid and a proposed energy efficiency standard led the week. The per capita regulatory burden for 2016 is $452.

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 39
• New Final Rules: 78
• 2016 Total Pages of Regulation: 64,048
• 2016 Final Rules: $106.17 Billion
• 2016 Proposed Rules: $40.4 Billion

The American Action Forum (AAF) has catalogued regulations according to their codification in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The CFR is organized into 50 titles, with each title corresponding to an industry or part of government. This snapshot will help to determine which sectors of the economy receive the highest number of regulatory actions.

The Department of Energy proposed another round of efficiency standards for walk-in coolers and freezers. Net present value costs of the measure are $800 million, with just $43 million in annual costs, compared to $324 million in benefits. DOE will accept comments until November 14, 2016.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) finalized a rule adding emergency preparedness requirements for both programs. Providers and suppliers must plan for natural and man-made disasters and accommodate the needs of patients during these situations. The annual paperwork costs alone eclipse $279 million, with roughly $476 million in long-term burdens; there are more than three million new hours of paperwork associated with the rulemaking. The final costs of the rule are $193 million more expensive than the proposed version.

Affordable Care Act

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed costs of $48.5 billion in final state and private-sector burdens and 171.4 million annual paperwork hours.

Dodd-Frank

Click here to view the total estimated revised costs from Dodd-Frank; since passage, the legislation has produced more than 74.8 million final paperwork burden hours and imposed $36.3 billion in direct compliance costs.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $146.5 billion in compliance costs ($106.17 billion in final rules) and has imposed 126.6 million in net paperwork burden hours (91 million from final rules). Click below for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.