Week in Regulation

Another Subdued Week

Halloween happened to fall on Wednesday last week, so it is somewhat fitting that an eerie trend emerged. Much like the week before it, there was one (relatively minor) deregulatory measure of note against a backdrop of otherwise mundane rulemakings. Between both proposed and final rules last week, agencies published roughly $16.8 million in net costs, and increased paperwork by 58,150 hours. The per capita regulatory burden for 2018 is negative $28.36.

REGULATORY TOPLINES

  • New Proposed Rules: 38
  • New Final Rules: 50
  • 2018 Total Pages of Regulation: 54,964
  • 2018 Final Rules: -$9.3 Billion
  • 2018 Proposed Rules: -$545 Billion

TRACKING REGULATORY MODERNIZATION

There was some action on the Executive Order (EO) 13,771 front this past week. The Department of Defense (DOD) finalized a rule that seeks “to remove an obsolete requirement from a DFARS clause.” DOD estimates that the deregulatory measure would save affected entities roughly $9.7 million as well as $4.9 million in government savings. This now puts DOD as a net-saver for regulatory budget purposes in the still-young fiscal year (FY) 2019. This should be welcome news for the department as it is one of a handful of agencies that merely has to achieve zero net costs over the next year.

So far into FY 2019, there have been four deregulatory actions against one regulatory action (per the rubric created by EO 13,771 and the administration’s subsequent guidance document) with quantified net savings of roughly $31.3 million. The administration’s cumulative savings goal for FY 2019 is approximately $18 billion.

STATE OF MAJOR OBAMA-ERA INITIATIVES

Based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the ACA has imposed costs of $52.9 billion in final state and private-sector burdens and 176.9 million annual paperwork hours.

Since passage, the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation has produced more than 82.9 million final paperwork burden hours and imposed $38.9 billion in direct compliance costs.

TOTAL BURDENS

Since January 1, the federal government has published $554.2 billion in net cost savings (with $9.3 billion in net savings from final rules) and paperwork burdens amounting to roughly 7.2 million hours (including 8.2 million hours of paperwork reduced under final rules). Click here for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.

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