Week in Regulation

The Last Vestiges of the Obama Administration

Despite an executive memo freezing regulatory output, a few notable regulations on Monday slipped through the cracks, including one from the Federal Reserve, and regulators added $2.7 billion in total costs. Annualized costs were $2 billion, compared to $683 million in annual benefits; paperwork grew by 756,000 hours. Outside of Monday and Tuesday, there were no significant regulations and the volume at the Federal Register resembled the government shutdown. The per capita regulatory burden for 2017 is $428.

Regulatory Toplines

  • New Proposed Rules: 21
  • New Final Rules: 50
  • 2017 Total Pages of Regulation: 8,656
  • 2017 Final Rules: $27.1 Billion
  • 2017 Proposed Rules: $111.5 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 Food and Drug Administration managed to publish a proposal regulating certain nicotine levels in smokeless tobacco products. The regulation argues limiting the amount of this type of nicotine will lead to lower cancer rates. The annual costs of the proposal are $35.3 million and the benefits are $683 million, through reduced oral cancer mortality. The measure also imposes 463,000 hours of paperwork.

The Department of Labor published a final rule on examinations in metal and nonmetal mines. The rule would require an inspection before miners enter and include a report of each examination. The regulation imposes a total cost of $345 million, with 222,000 paperwork burden hours.

Tracking Midnight Regulation

The Congressional Review Act carryover provision should begin on June 13, 2017. The House and Senate should have until at least June to review rules and vote on resolutions of disapproval.

Affordable Care Act

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed costs of $53 billion in final state and private-sector burdens and 176.9 million annual paperwork hours.

Dodd-Frank

The Federal Reserve issued its final rule for “Too Big to Fail” or Systemically Important Financial Institutions (SIFIs). The rule requires banks with more than $50 billion in assets to maintain a minimum amount of capital, including unsecured long-term debt. According to the regulatory analysis, SIFIs will incur annual costs of $2 billion, but minimal paperwork burdens. Given the changing personnel of many agencies implementing Dodd-Frank, this might be one of the last notable rules for the next few months.

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 $38.5 billion in direct compliance costs.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $138.6 billion in compliance costs ($27.1 billion in final rules) and has cut 20.7 million paperwork burden hours (due to 24.1 million in reductions from final rules). Click below for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.

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