The regulatory pace slowed again this week, with just $152 million in total burdens. Annual costs were $131 million, with no quantified benefits. Despite the slow week, however, paperwork accelerated by 2.5 million hours. The Department of Interior’s (Interior) “Stream Protection Rule” led all rulemakings in costs and paperwork.

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 55
• New Final Rules: 74
• 2015 Total Pages of Regulation: 45,840
• 2015 Proposed Rules: $72.6 Billion
• 2015 Final Rules: $60.8 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.

In what was supposed to be a non-controversial measure, Interior finally published its proposed stream protection measure. It attempts to balance clean water with coal extraction and applies equally to both surface mines and the “surface effects” of underground mines. Part of the regulation aims to restrict selenium deposits in waterways; although beneficial in small amounts, elevated levels can cause toxicity in humans and aquatic wildlife. Annual costs for the measure are approximately $52 million, with more than 2.5 million paperwork burden hours; the proposal will generate more than 430,000 annual responses from the private sector.  

Affordable Care Act

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed costs of $47 billion in state and private-sector burdens and 165.7 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 65.4 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $33.4 billion in direct compliance costs.

A Note on Paperwork

The Office of Management and Budget approved 55 paperwork requirements, decreasing the paperwork burden hours by 164,520 hours. There were two 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 was by EPA: 839,526 hours (Revisions to the Total Coliform Rule). The Department of Commerce decreased a collection by more than 649,000 hours.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $133.4 billion in compliance costs ($60.8 billion in final rules) and has imposed 43.2 million in net paperwork burden hours (10.7 million from final rules). Click below for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.