The Week in Regulation: June 6-10, 2011
The federal government issued 1,828 pages of new regulations this week, driving costs higher by more than $408.5 million. A slew of pricey Dodd-Frank rules drove total compliance costs for the law over the $1 billion mark for the first time.
Administrative agencies proposed 55 rules and implemented 61 final rules this week. The number of significant regulations increased by 6, and there have been 274 “significant” proposals this year; the federal government has now issued 34,142 pages of regulations in 2011.
The largest regulatory item was a $136 million proposed rule from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Unlike previous Dodd-Frank cost estimates, CFTC actually provided a monetary figure for compliance costs. The proposed rule governs “futures commission merchants and derivatives clearing organizations regarding the treatment of cleared swaps customer contracts….” The comment period closes on August 8.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed another Dodd-Frank rule which would regulate credit rating agencies currently registered with SEC. The Commission is also requiring “issuers and underwriters of asset-backed securities [to] make publicly available the findings and conclusions of any third-party due diligence report….” SEC estimates that the rule will cost the industry $28.9 million.
To date, the total estimated compliance costs from Dodd-Frank dramatically increased to more than $1 billion, but of the 126 major rulemakings, only 24 contain quantified cost estimates.
Finally, a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed rule implementing the Affordable Care Act would increase compliance costs by more than $87 million. The rule aims to enhance patient privacy for Medicare participants.
For the year the total cost of 388 proposed or enacted regulations is more than $67.2 billion, or roughly $600 million a day in compliance costs. Click here for our database of the major regulations promulgated in 2011.
