Regulatory costs inched along again this week, with $362 million in new burdens. Annual burdens were $28 million, compared to $105 million in benefits; regulators added slightly more than 42,000 paperwork hours. The per capita regulatory burden for 2015 is $425.

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 41
• New Final Rules: 80
• 2015 Total Pages of Regulation: 53,690
• 2015 Proposed Rules: $73.3 Billion
• 2015 Final Rules: $63 Billion

The American Action Forum (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.

A Department of Energy (DOE) proposal to increase the efficiency of battery chargers led the week with $200 million in present value costs. The agency estimates the payback period, the time it takes consumers to reap the efficiency savings of a more expensive product, ranges from 0.6 to 2.7 years. DOE projects annual costs of just $9 million, compared to $89 million in benefits.

The Department of Labor (DOL) proposed proximity detection systems for “Mobile Machines in Underground Mines.” The measure aims to prevent accidents involving pinning, crushing, and striking underground coal miners. The total costs of the measure are $161 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

Click here to view the total estimated revised costs from Dodd-Frank; since passage, the legislation has produced more than 67.2 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $35 billion in direct compliance costs.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $136.3 billion in compliance costs ($63 billion in final rules) and has imposed 49.3 million in net paperwork burden hours (14.18 million from final rules). Click below for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.