Regulators approached $100 billion in final rules for the year, publishing $1.7 billion in burdens this week. Annualized costs were $495 million, with no monetized benefits, and 3.6 million paperwork burden hours. A “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” final rule for federal contractors from the Department of Defense (DOD) led the week. The per capita regulatory burden for 2016 is $424.

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 69
• New Final Rules: 101
• 2016 Total Pages of Regulation: 59,120
• 2016 Final Rules: $99.27 Billion
• 2016 Proposed Rules: $38.2 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 DOD, with two other agencies, published a final rule implementing President Obama’s Executive Order 13,763. The goal of the rule is to improve federal contractor compliance with federal labor laws. It has been derisively referred to as a “Blacklisting” measure, punishing contractors for past violations. The rule effectively bars companies from utilizing pre-dispute arbitration clauses as well as provides employees with additional data on compensation and employment status. All of these provisions will result in higher costs for contractors, which means higher prices for the federal government to contract for goods and services. The cost to the federal government is roughly $25 million higher because of the rule. Government estimates place costs to contractors in the first two years at $872 million, with 2.1 million paperwork burden hours.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a proposed rule to provide a framework for “Good Laboratory Practices.” The proposal seeks to ensure data quality and the integrity of lab test results. Costs are $51 million annually, with slightly less than one million paperwork burden hours.

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 74.7 million final paperwork burden hours and imposed $36.1 billion in direct compliance costs.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $137.5 billion in compliance costs ($99.27 billion in final rules) and has imposed 121 million in net paperwork burden hours (85.7 million from final rules). Click below for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.