The short week produced little in the way of regulatory costs and benefits: just $18 million in costs and 3,200 paperwork burden hours. EPA’s proposed contingency plan for hazardous substances led the week.                    

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 52
• New Final Rules: 40
• 2015 Significant Documents: 32
• 2015 Total Pages of Regulation: 3,864
• 2015 Proposed Rules: $338 Million
• 2015 Final Rules: $316 Million

EPA proposed a rule to mitigate oil and hazardous substance spills into waters of the United States. The proposal also encourages the development of safe spill mitigating products. EPA estimates annual costs of less than $700,000 annually, with $10.2 million in net present value burdens.

This week marked the fourth anniversary of the President’s Executive Order (EO) 13,563. The measure was designed to look back at existing regulatory burdens and “streamline, modify, expand, or repeal” past rules. After four years, it appears the administration has focused more on expansion than repeal.

The annualized tally of all notable rules included in 13,563 reports is an increase of $12.7 billion. For example, CAFE standards and EPA’s Tier 3 rules on sulfur standards were both included in retrospective reports, even though they added more than $12.3 billion in annual burdens. For proposed rules contained in retrospective reports, the tally is still $1.5 billion in additional burdens, thanks in part to an energy efficiency rule that will impose $413 million in annual burdens.

There have been deregulatory successes from EO 13,563. For example, the White House touted the figure of “$13 billion dollars in the near term.” Assuming this figure represents the net present value of rules that would only cut costs, it is accurate. According to AAF research, there are $2.5 billion in proposed cost reductions and $12.1 billion in final net present value reductions, for $14.6 billion possible savings. As noted, however, these savings are dwarfed by the cost-increasing rules contained in 13,563 reports.

Perhaps the biggest success of EO 13,563 is on the battle against paperwork. Thanks to a recent final rule cutting paperwork for truckers, there have been more than 73 million hours of paperwork reductions as part of EO 13,563. There are an additional 45.7 million hours that could reduce paperwork in the proposed form. Unfortunately, there are also 31.6 million hours of final paperwork that will increase paperwork, but on net, the EO has reduced some paperwork requirements.

Affordable Care Act

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed costs of $41.3 billion in state and private-sector burdens and 163.6 million annual paperwork hours.

Dodd-Frank

Click here to view the total estimated revised costs from Dodd-Frank; since passage, the legislation has produced more than 63.7 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $32.9 billion in direct compliance costs. Based on calculations from the Financial Services Roundtable, Dodd-Frank regulations would require 31,940 employees to file federal paperwork.

A Note on Paperwork

There were 383 notices published in the Federal Register this week. The Office of Management and Budget approved 73 paperwork requirements, decreasing the paperwork burden hours by 1.9 million hours. 

There was one major change to existing paperwork requirements (defined as an hourly burden increase or decrease of 500,000 or greater). The largest increase in paperwork burden hours imposed by an information collection requirement (ICR) was 494,000 hours from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The largest decrease in paperwork burden hours imposed by an ICR was 3.2 million hours from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $653.8 million in compliance costs and has added 301,376 paperwork burden hours. Click here for our comprehensive database of regulations and rulemakings promulgated in 2015.