The Week in Regulation: October 1-5

Fri, 2012-10-05 11:03 | Regulation | Sam Batkins
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Regulatory costs slowed again this week, with just $89 million in published burdens.  A final rule also cut 5,000 hours of paperwork, netting just 5,947 hours this week.  FAA’s airworthiness directives comprised one-hundred percent of this week’s costs.

Regulatory Toplines

  • New Proposed Rules: 53
  • New Final Rules: 88
  • New Significant Documents: 13
  • 2012 Significant Documents: 512
  • 2012 Total Pages of Regulation: 61,228

ObamaCare

There were no notable ObamaCare rulemakings this week.  Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed an estimated $20.4 billion in private-sector burdens, approximately $7.2 billion in costs to the states, and 63.2 million annual paperwork hours.

Dodd-Frank

This week the Federal Housing Finance Agency proposed a rule under section 165(i)(2) of Dodd-Frank, requiring certain financial institutions, namely Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to conduct annual stress tests.  There were no published costs or paperwork burdens.    

Click here to view the total estimated compliance costs from Dodd-Frank; since passage the legislation has produced more than 51.3 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $14.2 billion in direct compliance costs.  Based on calculations from the Financial Services Roundtable, Dodd-Frank regulations would require 24,194 employees to file federal paperwork.

A Note on Notices

This week federal agencies published 550 notices.  In these notices, agencies typically request new or revised paperwork burdens from the Office of Management and Budget.  These notices are generally not final, merely requests with a comment period.

Agencies requested 141.5 million paperwork burden hours, the equivalent of forcing 70,749 employees into red tape compliance.  The associated costs of these burdens: $37.9 million, or $0.26 per hour.

Total Burdens

At the current pace, the published regulatory burden for 2012 will exceed $97.1 billion.  Since January 1, the federal government has imposed $74.6 billion in compliance costs and more than 122.7 million annual paperwork burden hours.  For comparison, it took 7 million hours to build the Empire State Building.  

Click here for our comprehensive database of regulations and rulemakings promulgated in 2012.