Monthly Archives: March 2016

CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

Posted on March 28, 2016 | Comments Off on CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

Friday’s Federal Register, the last before the Easter holiday, contained 1,005 pages, 14 final regulations, 9 proposed regulations, and an impressive 119 agency notices. New rules for the week cover everything from tomatoes to dockworkers.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 53 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 66 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every three hours and 10 minutes.
  • With 708 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,052 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
  • Last week, 2,109 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,683 pages the previous week.
  • Currently at 17,029 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 73,401 pages. The 2015 Federal Register had an adjusted page count of 81,611.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Six such rules have been published so far in 2016, none in the last week.
  • The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations ranges from $629 million to $1.46 billion.
  • 65 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
  • So far in 2016, 133 new rules affect small businesses; 22 of them are classified as significant.

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.

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Posted in regulation

CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

Posted on March 23, 2016 | Comments Off on CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

Along with nearly four dozen proposed regulations, new final regulations from the last week cover everything from cable boxes to Texas grapefruit.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 66 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, same as the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 33 minutes.
  • With 655 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,090 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
  • Last week, 1,683 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,601 pages the previous week.
  • Currently at 14,920 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 70,378 pages. The 2015 Federal Register had an adjusted page count of 81,611.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Six such rules have been published so far in 2016, none in the last week.
  • The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations ranges from $629 million to $1.46 billion.
  • 62 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
  • So far in 2016, 130 new rules affect small businesses; 20 of them are classified as significant.

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and@RegoftheDay on Twitter.

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Posted in regulation

Human Achievement of the Day: Polio Eradication

Posted on March 15, 2016 | Comments Off on Human Achievement of the Day: Polio Eradication

[This post is part of CEI’s annual Human Achievement Hour celebration, headed by my colleague Michelle Minton. It lasts from 8:30-9:30 in your local time zone on Saturday, March 19. Several of our other colleagues are pitching in their own favorite human achievements, which you can read at CEI’s blog over the next several days.]

Polio used to be a parent’s worst nightmare. The virus mostly affects children, and hampers the brain’s ability to communicate with muscles. While its effects are usually temporary, polio can lead to permanent paralysis and even death. If the paralysis reaches the respiratory system, victims will be unable to breathe on their own, which led to the depressing sight of hospital wards filled with rows and rows of iron lungs (pictured below). Polio can also cause permanent muscle atrophy, making walking difficult long after the disease runs its course. It has no cure, so once a child catches it, they can only hope their case is a mild one.

Then, in the 1950s, Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine—a human achievement that continues to improve millions of lives even today. Within just a few years, polio completely disappeared in the United States. Parents all over America no longer had to fear that the virus would rob their children of the ability to walk. Children no longer had to avoid their friends who might have infected them, and did not have to dread the possibility of spending two weeks inside an iron lung.

The developing world has been less fortunate. But more and more, some of the world’s poorest people are able to share in what the economist Julian Simon called “our victory against death.” Polio has been gone from the U.S. for decades, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that a global campaign to eradicate the disease began in earnest. Even in the current decade, regions of Africa continued to grapple with polio and its human costs—until now.

A New York Times story recently celebrated the fact that the entire continent of Africa has not had a single case of polio for more than a year. That’s 1.1 billion people, polio-free. Millions of childhoods are safer than they have ever been from a disease that has been a scourge for thousands of years.

What made this human achievement possible? Jonas Salk’s vaccine, most obviously. But the root cause is what economist and historian Deirdre McCloskey calls the “Great Enrichment.” As more and more people come around to the types of values that Human Achievement Hour celebrates—progress, dynamism, openness, and a general pro-human outlook—the world gets ever richer. And nowhere are those values having a greater impact than in the developing world. The more that people celebrate and honor human achievement, the more of it there will be.

Thanks to that ethos, more people today actually have lights that they can leave on, or turn off, as they wish. And when they do turn out those lights for the night, they can sleep well, knowing that thanks to people like Jonas Salk and his many successors who are working on cures for malaria, HIV/AIDS, and other diseases, their children will grow up to be healthier and wealthier than they were.

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Posted in Uncategorized

USA Act Increases Accountability, Restores Congress’ Power of the Purse

Posted on March 14, 2016 | Comments Off on USA Act Increases Accountability, Restores Congress’ Power of the Purse

Separation of powers is one of the United States government’s most basic principles. But for several decades, presidents from both parties have gradually concentrated more and more power in the executive branch, at the expense of Congress and the judiciary. A new bill from Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the Unauthorized Spending Accountability (USA) Act of 2016, seeks to rebalance a tilted scale.

Only Congress has the power of the purse, yet a long list of unauthorized executive branch programs continue to operate—256 in all, at a cost of more than $310 billion. The USA Act would automatically cut a program’s budget to 90 percent of its previously authorized level in its first unauthorized year, and to 85 percent in the second year. Programs would sunset altogether after a third unauthorized year.

As the executive branch becomes more overbearing with each successive administration, Congress becomes more and more of a wallflower. Congress has not seen fit to authorize entire cabinet-level departments, such as the State Department, since 2003. The Justice Department was last authorized by Congress in 2009. Other departments, such as the Bureau of Land Management, have now operated for twenty years without congressional authorization. The USA Act would require Congress to own up to its budgeting responsibilities, while simultaneously making the executive branch more accountable.

There is more. The USA Act’s automatic budget cuts and sunsets apply only to programs classified as discretionary spending. But two thirds of federal spending is classified as mandatory, including major programs such as Social Security and Medicare. While Congress has the power to change these programs at any time, they do not require congressional reauthorization, and can continue indefinitely on autopilot.

The USA Act would create a Spending Accountability Commission to examine mandatory spending programs and make them more accountable to Congress, which apparently prefers to avoid making them more efficient or fairer—a clear abdication of responsibility, given the coming entitlement crunch. The Commission would also assist Congress in creating a schedule for sun-setting unauthorized discretionary programs.

Restoring a proper separation of powers is a tall order. The USA Act is no panacea for all of government’s ills, but it would mark an important step in a crucial area of reform.

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Posted in Reform, Spending

CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

Posted on March 14, 2016 | Comments Off on CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

It was just another week in the world of federal regulation, with new rules covering everything from Nixon’s archives to black bears.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 66 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 80 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 33 minutes.
  • With 589 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,068 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
  • Last week, 1,601 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,600 pages the previous week.
  • Currently at 13,237 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 68,943 pages. The 2015 Federal Register had an adjusted page count of 81,611.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Six such rules have been published so far in 2016, one in the last week.
  • The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations ranges from $629 million to $1.46 billion.
  • 56 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
  • So far in 2016, 116 new rules affect small businesses; 20 of them are classified as significant.

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

  • There is a drawbridge in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. A federal regulation determines when it goes up and down.
  • The Homeland Security Department is loosening certain visa requirements for foreign graduates with degrees in STEM fields who want to temporarily work in the U.S.
  • Good news: the Lousiana black bear is no longer an endangered species. The American black bear, which is similar in appearance but not endangered, is also being removed from the list.
  • The Corporation for National and Community Service has a new address.
  • The National Archives and Records Administration is changing its policies regarding its Nixon administration materials.
  • Pay regulations for boat pilots in the Great Lakes.

For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and@RegoftheDay on Twitter.

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Posted in regulation

Regulatory Discretion: Both Good and Bad

Posted on March 13, 2016 | Comments Off on Regulatory Discretion: Both Good and Bad

From p. 137 of Cornell political scientist Theodore Lowi’s 1969 book The End of Liberalism: Ideology, Policy, and the Crisis of Public Authority:

The move from concreteness to abstractness in the definition of public policy was probably the most important single change in the entire history of public control in the United States.

Lowi’s point concerns the separation of powers. In theory, Congress passes a law directing a regulatory agency to regulate something in a specific way, then the agency does so. The executive branch executes legislation; hence its name.

This is not how things work in practice. More and more, Congress delegates its legislative powers away to the executive branch. On issues ranging from health insurance subsidies to power plants to Internet infrastructure, executive branch agencies act unilaterally. And when they cite congressional statutes, they do so abstractly, not concretely, just as Lowi said nearly 50 years ago.

An example: the text of the Clean Air Act says nothing about CO2 emissions. But a few years ago, the EPA issued a cap-and-trade regulation for CO2 emissions, even though Congress explicitly rejected a bill to do so. The EPA justified its decision on the abstract principles on which the Clean Air Act is based. The fact that the text of bill, as amended over the years, does not mention CO2 emissions as a pollutant, did not matter to the EPA.

There is a role for discretion in regulatory matters. Discretion makes it possible to avoid regulatory abuses, clear needless bureaucratic hurdles, and avoid obvious stupidities such as suspending children from school for wielding Pop-Tart “guns” in cafeterias.

But Lowi makes a good point: discretion is a double-edged sword. Without a clear separation of powers, its outer edge can spill blood by executive order just as easily as the inner edge can cut innocents loose from government-mandated ropes.

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Posted in Books, Philosophy, regulation

The Subjective Theory of Value in One Sentence, Two Translators, and Three Languages

Posted on March 11, 2016 | Comments Off on The Subjective Theory of Value in One Sentence, Two Translators, and Three Languages

John Locke, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx all used a labor theory of value in their very different works.  To them, a good is worth however much work someone puts into making it. This is incorrect. Value is actually subjective; there is no absolute standard.

As a personal example, I would place a very high value on a nice guitar, since I would play and enjoy the instrument–talent level aside. Someone who isn’t interested in music would be unwilling to pay much money for the exact same good, and rightly so–they would get little use out of it.

So what is a good worth? That’s something every individual decides for himself. There is no single right answer. Value is subjective.

This subjective theory of value originated in part in 1871 with Carl Menger’s textbook Principles of Economics. But this theory is actually best explained by an Italian economist, Ferdinando Galiani, who the German-speaking Menger quotes on p. 296 of his Principles:

ch’essendo varie le disposizioni degli animi umani e varj i bisogni, vario é il valor delle cose.

Any Italian-speaking readers, please correct any of my mistakes. The same quotation reads in English:

since the dispositions of human minds vary, the value of things varies.

Another aphorism that captures the spirit of subjective value is “one man’s trash is another’s treasure.”

Economics can be a dismal science. It can quickly get technical and unnecessarily complicated, but the basics are understandable to everyone. The subjective theory of value is one of those basics–language barriers aside.

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Posted in Books, Economics

CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

Posted on March 7, 2016 | Comments Off on CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

After several years and multiple lawsuits, the TSA deigned to issue a formal rule for its use of full-body scanners. CEI’s Marc Scribner finds that the “TSA has still failed to justify the procedures that it imposes on millions of Americans each day.” Other federal federal agencies issued new regulations covering everything from wine to lamb.

On to the data:

  • Last week, 80 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 67 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 6 minutes.
  • With 523 final regulations published so far in 2016, the federal government is on pace to issue 3,041 regulations in 2016. Last year’s total was 3,406 regulations.
  • Last week, 1,600 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,415 pages the previous week.
  • Currently at 11,636 pages, the 2016 Federal Register is on pace for 67,652 pages. The 2015 Federal Register had an adjusted page count of 81,611.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Five such rules have been published so far in 2016, one in the last week.
  • The running compliance cost tally for 2016’s economically significant regulations ranges from $629 million to $1.46 billion.
  • 53 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published this year.
  • So far in 2016, 102 new rules affect small businesses; 19 of them are classified as significant.

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.

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Posted in regulation

Also, Water Is Wet

Posted on March 6, 2016 | Comments Off on Also, Water Is Wet

The Hill: Supreme Court standoff spurs fear of politicization of court

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Posted in Political Animals