This Week in Ridiculous Regulations

Regulators were relatively quiet during the week before the midterm election, though CEI wasn’t, with our colleague Ted Frank arguing a case before the Supreme Court on class action legal abuses. New regulations from the last week range from farm mortgages to military acquisition mentors.

On to the data:

• Last week, 68 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register, after 79 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every two hours and 28 minutes.
• Federal agencies have issued 2,782 final regulations in 2018. At that pace, there will be 3,344 new final regulations. Last year’s total was 3,236 regulations.
• Last week, 1,066 new pages were added to the Federal Register, after 1,349 pages the previous week.
• The 2018 Federal Register totals 54,227 pages. It is on pace for 65,167 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. Five such rules have been published this year, none in the last week.
• The running compliance cost tally for 2018’s economically significant regulations is a net savings ranging from $348.9 million to $560.9 million.
• Agencies have published 90 final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” so far this year.
• So far in 2018, 527 new rules affect small businesses; 22 of them are classified as significant.

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• Military acquisition regulations contain a mentor-protégé program.
• Another regulation for preventing collisions at sea. That’s 377 such rules since 1994; see them all here.
• Bank reserve requirements.
• The Farm Credit Administration is updating its Farmer Mac program to subsidize farm mortgages.
• An Federal Communications Commission regulation for 911 calls in Richardson, Texas.
• Revised ethical rules for National Mediation Board employees.
• Design standards for highways.
• Cod-fishing regulations, but only for boats over 60 feet long using a certain type of fishing gear.

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