This week regulators published $205 million in total regulatory costs, led by a proposal for new efficiency standards for ceiling fan light kits. Annualized burdens were $127 million, compared to $65 million in benefits; paperwork increased by more than 139,000 hours.

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 36
• New Final Rules: 83
• 2015 Total Pages of Regulation: 49,116
• 2015 Proposed Rules: $72.7 Billion
• 2015 Final Rules: $61 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 Energy (DOE) published a proposal to add efficiency standards for ceiling fan light kits. The measure would, compared to other DOE rules, impose marginal costs. Net present value burdens could reach $70 million. However, annual benefits easily exceed annual costs: $65 million to $6 million.

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

There were two notable Dodd-Frank rulemakings this week. The Federal Reserve finalized capital surcharges for “Globally Systemically Important Bank Holding Companies.” The rule contains minor burdens, just 11 paperwork hours and no monetized costs.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) finalized a rule that would register security-based swap dealers. The costs are also trivial in the larger scheme of Dodd-Frank: $14.2 million and 28,000 paperwork burden hours.  

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.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $133.8 billion in compliance costs ($61.05 billion in final rules) and has imposed 43.9 million in net paperwork burden hours (11.3 million from final rules). Click below for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.