Inertia Wins!

The federal government has issued a proposed regulation to tackle the thorny problem of how to weigh a bus.

This week in the world of regulation:

• Last week, 94 new final rules were published, up from 88 the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 1 hour and 47 minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• All in all, 3,486 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
• If this keeps up, the total tally for 2012 will be 3,731 new rules.
• Last week, 1,778 new pages were added to the 2012 Federal Register, for a total of 72,898 pages.
• At its current pace, the 2012 Federal Register will run 77,191 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.
• One economically significant rule was published last week.
• So far, 331 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2012.
• So far this year, 663 final rules affect small business; 93 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

• This week’s economically significant rule comes from the Defense Department. It will spend about $800 million to pay 2011 tuition for voluntary education programs for Service members. Since this is government spending and not compliance cost, I am scoring this rule as zero-cost for our running tally.
• If you produce qualified movies or tv shows, the IRS has updated its allowable deductions.
• There are also new excise tax rules for craft brewers.
• The Postal Service is increasing its international mail prices.
• If you grow apricots or sweet cherries in certain parts of Washington state, the Agricultural Marketing Service has lowered its assessment rates on your crops.
• Ditto if you grow pears in certain parts of Oregon and Washington, or avocados in southern Florida.
• Civilian flights are now allowed at two airports in Iraq, according to the FAA.
• NHTSA issued a final rule titled, simply, “Final Rule.” We do not expect this to literally be NHTSA’s final rule.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.

Fridays are when I comb through the Federal Register and assemble the weekly Battered Business Bureau posts. My expression often resembles this cat. Thanks to my colleague Jeremy Kolassa for making the image.