The second week of 2018 marked a relatively quiet week that brought modest new regulatory burdens. Between both final and proposed rules, agencies published $44 million in total costs and 135,689 hours of new paperwork. While there were few notable rulemakings, the Trump administration’s latest Unified Agenda was officially published in the Federal Register. The per capita regulatory burden for 2018 is negative $1.33.

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 28
• New Final Rules: 57
• 2018 Total Pages of Regulation: 1,850
• 2018 Final Rules: -$431.1 Million
• 2018 Proposed Rules: $42.5 Million

Tracking Regulatory Modernization

There were no rulemakings with quantifiable cost savings this week. There was one Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule that qualified as a “regulatory action” under Executive Order (EO) 13,771. However, the EPA measure created relatively insignificant burdens of $457,000 in annual costs and 10,301 hours of paperwork.

According to American Action Forum (AAF) analysis, since the start of FY 2018 (beginning Oct. 1, 2017), executive agencies have promulgated 14 deregulatory actions with quantified cost savings against 5 regulatory measures that impose costs, under the rubric created by EO 13,771 and the administration’s subsequent guidance document on the matter. These rules combine for a net annual savings of roughly $446.5 million. The administration’s goal for FY 2018 is $687 million in net annual savings.

Click here to view AAF’s examination of the administration’s progress under the “one-in, two-out” executive order through the end of Fiscal Year 2017.

State of Major Obama-Era Initiatives

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.

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 $388.6 million in net costs savings ($431.1 million from final rules) and has cut 729,596 paperwork burden hours (all from final rules). Click below for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.