Regulators published $144 million in annualized costs this week with more than 2.4 million associated paperwork burden hours; no regulation monetized possible benefits. An expensive Medicare and Medicaid proposal led the week.        

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 62
• New Final Rules: 100
• 2014 Significant Documents: 361
• 2014 Total Pages of Regulation: 42,180
• 2014 Proposed Rules: $48.2 Billion
• 2014 Final Rules: $56.8 Billion

AAF has catalogued regulations according to their codification in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The CFR is organized into 50 titles, with each title corresponding to an industry or part of government. This snapshot will help to determine which sectors of the economy receive the highest number of regulatory actions.

The administration published a proposal to revise the Medicare outpatient payment system and change data sources used for Medicare Advantage and Part D sponsors. The proposal will cost roughly $70 million and impose more than 2.4 million paperwork burden hours.

The administration also proposed a rule to reduce burdens and improve standards for the transportation of bulk explosives. Annual savings will eclipse $10 million and reduce the paperwork burden on the industry. To date, deregulatory proposals from Executive Order 13,563 have produced $3 billion in savings and final rules have generated $10.1 billion in reductions.

Affordable Care Act

There were no notable heath care rulemakings this week. Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed a cost of $27.5 billion in private-sector burdens, approximately $12.3 billion in costs to the states, and 159.2 million annual paperwork hours.

Dodd-Frank

This week AAF celebrated the four-year anniversary of Dodd-Frank by releasing a paper analyzing the regulatory, housing, and employment implications of the law. In addition to the regulatory burdens, AAF found the housing market has still not recovered, but regulatory agencies have. Financial regulator employment has increased 16.2 percent since 2010, compared to 2.9 percent for the financial industry as a whole.  

Click here to view the total estimated compliance costs from Dodd-Frank; since passage, the legislation has produced more than 60.7 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $21.8 billion in direct compliance costs. Based on calculations from the Financial Services Roundtable, Dodd-Frank regulations would require 30,374 employees to file federal paperwork.

A Note on Notices

There were 669 notices published in the Federal Register this week. However, there were no particularly notable actions.

The Office of Management and Budget approved 39 paperwork requirements, decreasing the paperwork burden hours by 4.4 million hours. There were four major changes 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 884,000 hours from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The largest decrease in paperwork burden hours imposed by an ICR was 3.6 million hours from the Federal Trade Commission.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $105.1 billion in compliance costs and has imposed 19.3 million in net paperwork burden hours. Click here for our comprehensive database of regulations and rulemakings promulgated in 2014.