For the first time in AAF’s history, there were no proposed or final rules that imposed costs or paperwork burden hours. Although the federal government reopened for the final two days this week, the only notable measure was a notice from the administration to add 3.2 million burden hours to support its struggling health care exchanges.                   

Regulatory Toplines

● New Proposed Rules: 0
● New Final Rules: 3
● 2013 Significant Documents: 498
● 2013 Total Pages of Regulation: 62,356
● 2013 Proposed Rules: $65.5 Billion
● 2013 Final Rules: $20.5 Billion

AAF has catalogued regulations according to their likely 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 tool will help to determine which sectors of the economy receive the highest number of regulatory actions.

Regulation by Industry in 2013

Affordable Care Act

The only notable entry in the Federal Register this week was a notice from HHS to support its health care exchanges. The 3.2 million new hours are “critical to the basic ability of Exchanges to determine eligibility for and [sic] issue certificates of exemption, and will also assist Exchanges, HHS, and IRS in ensuring program integrity and quality improvement,” according to HHS.

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed an estimated cost of $23.6 billion in private-sector burdens, approximately $8.5 billion in costs to the states, and 126.8 million annual paperwork hours.

Dodd-Frank

Click here to view the total estimated compliance costs from Dodd-Frank; since passage, the legislation has produced more than 60 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $16.3 billion in direct compliance costs. Based on calculations from the Financial Services Roundtable, Dodd-Frank regulations would require 29,849 employees to file federal paperwork.

A Note on Notices

This week, federal agencies published 42 notices. In these notices, agencies typically request new or updated paperwork burdens from the Office of Management and Budget. These notices are generally not final, merely proposals accompanied by a comment period.

Agencies requested 3.3 million paperwork burden hours, the equivalent of forcing 1,657 employees into red tape compliance. The associated costs of these burdens: $103 million, or $31.23 per hour. Although some of these requests extend current collections without influencing the overall level of paperwork, others impose additional burdens.

There was one new information collection request, imposing 3.2 million hours. The net change for existing collections was an increase of 18,875 hours. The overall paperwork burden increased by 3.2 million hours this week.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $86.1 billion in compliance costs, and 67.3 million annual paperwork burden hours. At the current pace, regulators will publish $108 billion in regulations this year. Click here for our comprehensive database of regulations and rulemakings promulgated in 2013.