The big news this week was Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, plus a proposed 10 percent tariff on $200 billion of Chinese goods that could take effect in late August. Things were less uneventful at regulatory agencies, with a lower-than-usual 51 new final regulations, ranging from skin disability ratings to garage door openers.
On to the data:
- Last week, 51 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 64 the previous week.
- That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every three hours and 17 minutes.
- Federal agencies have issued 1,782 final regulations in 2018. At that pace, there will be 3,300 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,236 regulations.
- Last week, 1,115 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 809 pages the previous week.
- The 2018 Federal Register totals 32,697 pages. It is on pace for 60,550 pages. The all-time record adjusted page count (which subtracts skips, jumps, and blank pages) is 96,994, set in 2016.
- Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Three such rules have been published this year, none in the last week.
- The running compliance cost tally for 2018’s economically significant regulations is $319.1 million.
- Agencies have published 63 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
- In 2018, 299 new rules affect small businesses; 16 of them are classified as significant.
Highlights from selected final rules published last week:
- Garage door opener safety standards.
- Rating skin disabilities.
- Information collection for Massachusetts cranberries.
- Piper airplanes.
- Fireworks at an upcoming Pittsburgh Steelers game.
- Archaeological artifacts from Libya.
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.
Inertia Wins! 