Week in Regulation

$352 Million in Regulatory Costs

Regulatory burdens inched along again this week. Regulators published $352 million in costs ($143 million annualized), compared to $163 million in benefits. Paperwork surged ahead at 1.9 million burden hours. The “Medicaid Mega Rule” led the week.                        

Regulatory Toplines

  • New Proposed Rules: 53
  • New Final Rules: 65
  • 2015 Significant Documents: 966
  • 2015 Total Pages of Regulation: 32,266
  • 2015 Proposed Rules: $25.4 Billion
  • 2015 Final Rules: $42.2 Billion

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.

This week the administration published its sprawling Medicaid managed care rule. AAF reviewed the proposal here, noting the Paperwork Reduction Act section spanned more than 120 pages and contained 61 different subsections. The proposal estimates more than $110 million in annual burdens and 1.8 million paperwork burden hours.

The Department of Energy proposed a rule to strengthen energy efficiency requirements for residential dehumidifiers. Although the total costs of the proposal are $220 million, the annualized costs are just $13 million. This compares to $163 million in annual benefits.       

Affordable Care Act

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed costs of $43.8 billion in state and private-sector burdens and 164.8 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 65.8 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $33.4 billion in direct compliance costs. Based on calculations assuming a 2,000-hour work year, Dodd-Frank regulations would require 32,900 employees to file federal paperwork annually.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $67.6 billion in compliance costs ($42.2 billion in final rules) and has imposed 31.3 million in net paperwork burden hours (6.3 million from final rules). Click below for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.

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