Week in Regulation

$2.4 Billion in Regulatory Costs

After the holiday weekend, regulators caught up on new rules, publishing more than $2.4 billion in costs this week. In addition, there were also more than 3.3 million paperwork burden hours added. Menu labeling rules for restaurants and vending machines led the week.                       

Regulatory Toplines

  • New Proposed Rules: 39
  • New Final Rules: 71
  • 2014 Significant Documents: 598
  • 2014 Total Pages of Regulation: 72,538
  • 2014 Proposed Rules: $80 Billion
  • 2014 Final Rules: $80.4 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 Department of Education published a proposal to increase data availability about teacher preparation quality. This measure would primarily affect states and local governments, to the tune of approximately $42 million annually. The net result of the paperwork changes for local governments is a one million hour increase.

Affordable Care Act

After three years of proposals and White House review, the administration finally released updated calorie labeling standards for restaurants, movie theatres, grocery stores, and vending machines. As AAF reviewed here, the regulations are anything but cheap: $1.6 billion in total costs and more than two million paperwork hours. The administration even concedes that these rules will increase the cost of food and beverages.

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed costs of $40.8 billion in state and private-sector burdens and 162.1 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 63.8 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $32.7 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

This week federal agencies published 349 notices. The Office of Management and Budget approved 81 paperwork requirements, increasing the total paperwork burden by 1.3 million hours.

There was one major change in paperwork burdens, which is defined as an hourly burden increase or decrease of 500,000 hours or greater. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services increased paperwork by 1.2 million hours.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $160.4 billion in compliance costs and has imposed 41.22 million in net paperwork burden hours. Click here for our comprehensive database of regulations and rulemakings promulgated in 2014.

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