Week in Regulation

$1.9 Billion in Burdens

The shortened holiday week nevertheless produced two notable rulemakings and $1.9 billion in total costs. Annualized costs were $422 million, compared to $0 in monetized benefits; paperwork was modest, at just 878,000 published burden hours. A final rule attempting to curb opioid abuse and a proposal for securities advisers led the week. The per capita regulatory burden for 2016 is $383.

Regulatory Toplines

  • New Proposed Rules: 26
  • New Final Rules: 50
  • 2016 Total Pages of Regulation: 44,758
  • 2016 Final Rules: $91.55 Billion
  • 2016 Proposed Rules: $32.3 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.

CFR_7_08_2016

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a rule under the Advisers Act of 1940 to require investment advisers to draft and implement business continuity plans to address possible service disruptions. Advisers will be required to keep all plans from the past five years. There are 11,956 investment advisers registered with the SEC and the Commission estimates it will take between 50 to 500 hours to adopt and implement the plans. The total cost for the rulemaking is $1.3 billion, with 875,000 paperwork burden hours.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a regional haze plan for Utah. The regulation directly affects two units at two power plants in the state to control Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) emissions and improve visibility. Annual costs of the measure are $59 million.

Although not counted in the figures in the introduction of this post, the administration finalized its rule for opioid treatment this week, which was proposed in late March. Both the costs and benefits of the measure increased, with costs rising by $154 million and paperwork remaining the same. Final annual costs were $233 million, compared to $1.8 billion in benefits.

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 73.9 million final paperwork burden hours and imposed $36.2 billion in direct compliance costs.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $123.8 billion in compliance costs ($91.55 billion in final rules) and has imposed 75.4 million in net paperwork burden hours (49.9 million from final rules). At the current pace, the nation is well on its way to $200 billion in regulatory costs and more than 100 million paperwork hours in the president’s final year in office. Click below for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.

Reg Rodeo_07_08_2016

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