Monthly Archives: November 2012

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 32 new final rules were published, down from 48 the previous Thanksgiving-shortened week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 5 hours and 15 minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• All in all, 3,336 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2012 will be 3,722 new rules.
• Last week, 722 new pages were added to the 2012 Federal Register, for a total of 69,993 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2012 Federal Register will run 77,426 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. The 45 such rules published so far in 2012 have compliance costs of at least $24 billion. Two of the rules do not have cost estimates, and two other rules have cost estimates that do not give a total annual cost. We assume that rules lacking this basic transparency measure cost the bare minimum of $100 million per year. The true cost is almost certainly higher.
• Two economically significant rules were published last week.
• So far, 319 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2012.
• So far this year, 623 final rules affect small business; 90 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• The Energy Department recently outlined test procedures for dishwashers and dehumidifiers to see if they meet new energy efficiency standards. Apparently they didn’t get them quite right, because they issued a correction on Friday.
• The Federal Reserve and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have teamed up to issue an update to Regulation M, which has to do with consumer leasing, and two updates to Regulation Z, which covers truth in lending.
• The FAA issued four airworthiness directives for Boeing and Cessna airplanes. You can read them here, here, here, and here.
• If you are interested in transporting solid waste by rail, you should be aware of this new regulation covering transfer facilities.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 48 new final rules were published, down from 61 the previous hurricane-shortened week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 3 hours and 30 minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• All in all, 3,304 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2012 will be 3,767 new rules.
• Last week, 1,846 new pages were added to the 2012 Federal Register, for a total of 69,271 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2012 Federal Register will run 78,008 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. The 45 such rules published so far in 2012 have compliance costs of at least $24 billion. Two of the rules do not have cost estimates, and two other rules have cost estimates that do not give a total annual cost. We assume that rules lacking this basic transparency measure cost the bare minimum of $100 million per year. The true cost is almost certainly higher.
• Two economically significant rules were published last week.
• So far, 319 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2012.
• So far this year, 623 final rules affect small business; 90 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• Both of this week’s economically significant rules are health care-related. The first rule weighs in at 357 pages, and will increase Medicare spending by $4.571 billion. I am scoring it as zero-cost in our running tally, since this is government spending and not compliance costs.
• A new OSHA rule regulates longshoremen’s headwear.

• The second rule alone is 483 pages long. A coherent cost estimate is not given. Since many of the provisions require extensive paperwork and other compliance measures, as opposed to government spending, I am counting it as costing $100 million, the bare minimum needed for its economically significant status. The real cost is almost certainly higher.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.

Most people believe that businesses abhor regulations, and would love to do away with them entirely. This belief is often wrong. Many regulations make it harder for startups to enter the market, and can hobble smaller competitors. That’s why incumbent firms in many industries regularly welcome new regulations with open arms, and will spend millions on lobbying to pass them. It’s a way to keep the competition out.

Here is one historical example from the successful push to deregulate the trucking industry during the 1970s. About the only people who opposed deregulation were in the trucking industry itself. Check out the lengths they went to to preserve anti-competitive regulations:

In the 1978 hearings on trucking before the [Sen. Ted] Kennedy subcommittee, the industry offered the testimony of a paid consultant. Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum, Democrat of Ohio, producing a copy of the consultant’s original proposal, indignantly pointed out that he had essentially promised his study would support regulation before he was hired. Later, in an elaborate statement of its position before the Senate floor debate, the industry gave prominent attention to a purported critique of trucking deregulation by a Stanford University economist. Cited without facts of publication, the source turned out to be a commentary in the Los Angeles Times that was more cautionary than critical and described no research.

-Martha Derthick and Paul J. Quirk, The Politics of Deregulation, p. 125.

Something to keep in mind the next time someone calls a regulatory skeptic an industry shill. The precise opposite is usually the case.