Inertia Wins!

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 68 new final rules were published, down from 69 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and 28 minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• All in all, 3,623 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2012 will be 3,728 new rules.
• Last week, 1,265 new pages were added to the 2012 Federal Register, for a total of 75,450 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2012 Federal Register will run 76,677 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. The 46 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.
• No economically significant rules were published last week.
• So far, 339 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2012.
• So far this year, 682 final rules affect small business; 94 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• If you own a citrus grove, you can buy crop insurance from the federal government. A new rule updates some of the program’s provisions.
• It may be December, but that isn’t stopping the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from issuing a new rule for fishing for summer flounder.
• Sometimes the federal government will switch from one contractor to another for a given service. When it does, its policy is to “require service contractors and their subcontractors under successor contracts to offer employees of the predecessor contractor and its subcontractors a right of first refusal of employment for positions for which they are qualified.” If the government’s reason for making a switch is performance-related, then this rule may well make doing so pointless.
• Americans are now allowed to import sand pears from China.
• If you were thinking of importing pig semen from Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, or Slovenia, read this regulation first.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.

Transparency is in short supply in the world of regulation. How many rules does an agency have in the pipeline? How much will they cost? How much does the total stock of rules currently in effect cost, and how many are there? Some of these questions can’t be answered. The data for others are available, but scattered across different sources and dfficult to assemble.

There is a solution: each agency should have an annual regulatory report card that puts all this disparate information into one publicly accessible document. Agencies should already be doing this themselves, but aren’t.

That’s why, to set a good example, with plenty of help from my CEI colleagues, I put together just such a report card for the EPA. In it, you’ll find out that the best available estimate of the EPA’s total cost is $353 billion, which is more than Denmark’s entire 2011 GDP. You’ll also find out that the Code of Federal Regulations contains as many as 154,350 individual regulatory restrictions — just in the Title concerning environmental protection.

For all that important information and more, read the EPA Regulatory Report Card here.

Regulatory reform is as urgent an issue as ever. In today’s Washington Times, Wayne Crews and I write about a reform that has nearly two decades of bipartisan support, as well as a proven track record when applied to spending cuts: a Regulatory Reduction Commission. Here’s how it would work:

Both spending and regulations are almost impossible to cut using conventional political means. Yet one approach was tried in the 1990s that had some success: the Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC).

When the Cold War ended, America no longer needed such a large military. Because no member of Congress would vote to close an unneeded military base in his own district or state, the independent BRAC commission’s job was to give Congress an omnibus package of bases to vote on closing, without amendment. This approach was able to overcome the usual vote-trading and back-scratching, and the package passed. The Pentagon (and taxpayers) saved piles of money.

Since then, Mr. Mandel, Mr. Gramm and analysts across the political spectrum all have had the same thought: Using BRAC as a model with a proven track record for cutting unnecessary spending, can a similar mechanism be extended to repealing unneeded regulations?

It can. All it takes is a bit of courage from Congress and President Obama. Hopefully that isn’t asking too much.

Read the whole thing here.

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 69 new final rules were published, down from 94 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and 26 minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• All in all, 3,555 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2012 will be 3,728 new rules.
• Last week, 1,287 new pages were added to the 2012 Federal Register, for a total of 74,185 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2012 Federal Register will run 76,956 pages.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. The 46 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.
• No economically significant rules were published last week.
• So far, 333 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2012.
• So far this year, 675 final rules affect small business; 94 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• The FAA added further requirements to its recent flight crew rest regulations.
• The Federal Trade Commission issued a final rule to revise the Spanish translation of its Used Car Buyers Guide. Here are links to the current version in English and in Español.
• The EPA published 19 final rules this week. They are listed here.
• Interested in opening a low power FM station? Under FCC regulations, you may apply for up to 70 different stations – but no more than three may be in the same market.
• The Lost River sucker, a type of fish from Oregon and California, is the unknowing recipient of critical habitat to the tune of 146 miles of stream and 117,848 acres of land. Its relative, the shortnose sucker, is getting 136 miles of stream and 123,590 acres of land.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.