The publication of EPA’s “Climate Action Plan” and a proposal for new minimum wage standards pushed total costs above $98 billion. This week, annualized cost were $8.8 billion, compared with $71 billion in benefits, almost entirely represented by EPA’s climate proposal. There were more than 450,000 published paperwork burden hours.       

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 32
• New Final Rules: 78
• 2014 Significant Documents: 268
• 2014 Total Pages of Regulation: 35,478
• 2014 Proposed Rules: $48 Billion
• 2014 Final Rules: $50.5 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.

EPA’s climate proposal is now the largest proposal in 2014, both in terms of costs and benefits and this should not be a surprise. AAF reviewed the proposal here, noting that at $8.8 billion in costs, it would be the third most expensive rule in the past ten years. The large benefit figure stems from reductions in criteria pollutants, roughly $40 billion, and social cost of carbon benefits estimated at $31 billion. EPA does not give a net present value of the cost, but using 2020, 2025, and 2030 figures, total burdens could eclipse $21 billion.

Everyone will soon pay higher airline security fees. The administration published its interim final rule implementing the “Ryan-Murray” budget deal this week. The fees of a one-way trip from Washington to Chicago will now cost $5.60, compared to $2.50 before. The fees of a roundtrip stopover will cost $11.20, compared to $5.00 prior to the change. However, these higher fees are not included in the overall regulatory costs.  

Affordable Care Act

There were no notable ACA regulations this week. Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed an estimated cost of $27.5 billion in private-sector burdens, approximately $8 billion in costs to the states, and 159.2 million annual paperwork hours.

Dodd-Frank

There were no notable Dodd-Frank regulations this week. Click here to view the total estimated compliance costs from Dodd-Frank; since passage, the legislation has produced more than 60.4 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $21.7 billion in direct compliance costs. Based on calculations from the Financial Services Roundtable, Dodd-Frank regulations would require 30,211 employees to file federal paperwork.

Note on Notices

There were 449 notices published in the Federal Register this week. However, there were no particularly notable actions.

The Office of Management and Budget approved 38 paperwork requirements, slightly reducing paperwork burden hours by 6,852 hours. There were no major change 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 (ICR) was 141,417 hours from EPA. The largest decrease in paperwork burden hours imposed by an ICR was (82,500) hours from IRS.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $98.6 billion in compliance costs and has imposed more than 13.6 million in net paperwork burden hours. Click here for our comprehensive database of regulations and rulemakings promulgated in 2014.