After a record-setting week, regulators cooled down a bit and imposed just $562 million in regulatory burdens. Annualized costs were $300 million, compared to $9.7 million in benefits; paperwork hours accelerated by 2.5 million. A Department of Defense (DOD) rule concerning consumer credit led the week.

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 44
• New Final Rules: 65
• 2015 Total Pages of Regulation: 44,250
• 2015 Proposed Rules: $72.5 Billion
• 2015 Final Rules: $60.7 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.

DOD amended provisions of the Military Lending Act for servicemembers and their families. The measure extends the protections of the law “to a broader range of closed-end and open-end credit products.” DOD estimates annual costs of $30 million and more than $250 million in total burdens. In addition, the paperwork will generate 238 million responses, imposing two million burden hours.

The Department of Treasury, with five other agencies, finalized a rule for loans in flood areas. The rule “requires the escrow of flood insurance payments on residential improved real estate securing a loan.” It would impose more than $46 million in total costs and roughly 420,000 paperwork hours.  

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 39 paperwork requirements, increasing the paperwork burden hours by 7.4 million hours. There were five 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 the Department of Defense: 3.3 million hours.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $133.3 billion in compliance costs ($60.7 billion in final rules) and has imposed 40.7 million in net paperwork burden hours (10.7 million from final rules). Click below for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.