New year, new regulations for 2016. Regulators didn’t slow down, publishing $2.2 billion in regulatory burdens; annualized costs were $2.1 billion, compared to $102 million in annual benefits. The paperwork burden grew by just 12,000 hours. However, as the American Action Forum highlighted earlier this week, the nation’s paperwork burden is at its highest level ever, nearly 11.5 billion hours. The per capita regulatory burden for 2016 is already $6.90.

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 37
• New Final Rules: 32
• 2016 Total Pages of Regulation: 1,114
• 2016 Final Rules: $2.2 Billion 
• 2016 Proposed Rules: $21.1 Million 

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.

The Department of Energy (DOE) offered two modest final rules aimed at improving energy efficiency. The first regulates ceiling fan light kits and imposes $6 million in annual burdens, paired against $65 million in benefits through savings to consumers, NO_x reductions, and fewer greenhouse gases. The second measure sets standards for refrigerated beverage vending machines. It costs just $2 million annually, compared to $37 million in benefits.

Affordable Care Act

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed costs of $49.9 billion in state and private-sector burdens and 175.1 million annual paperwork hours.

Dodd-Frank

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) finalized margin requirements for uncleared swaps and swap dealers this week. The cost of the rule varies incredibly, depending on the assumption of opportunity costs to fund the capital and the source of the estimate. Some figures place the cost as high as $23 billion. CFTC, however, settled on a “most likely” range of $290 million to $2.05 billion.

Click here to view the total estimated revised costs from Dodd-Frank; since passage, the legislation has produced more than 76.6 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $39.3 billion in direct compliance costs.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $2.2 billion in compliance costs ($2.2 billion in final rules) and has imposed 12,960 net paperwork burden hours (all from final rules). Click below for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.