This past week in regulation was rather ho-hum by any standard. There were 11 rulemakings with some kind of quantified economic effect. Most of them, however, were fairly limited in terms of their overall impact. The main item of the week was a rule from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) further implementing the REAL ID Act of 2005. Across all rulemakings, agencies published $678.4 million in total costs and added 1.9 million annual paperwork burden hours.

REGULATORY TOPLINES

• Proposed Rules: 31
• Final Rules: 63
• 2024 Total Pages: 85,316
• 2024 Final Rule Costs: $1.29 trillion
• 2024 Proposed Rule Costs: $120.9 billion

NOTABLE REGULATORY ACTIONS

The most consequential rulemaking of the week was the final rule from DHS regarding “Minimum Standards for Driver’s Licenses and Identification Cards Acceptable by Federal Agencies for Official Purposes; Waiver for Mobile Driver’s Licenses.” Per the rule’s summary:

This rule is part of an incremental, multi-phased rulemaking that will culminate in the promulgation of comprehensive requirements that enable States to issue mobile driver’s licenses and mobile identification cards (collectively “mDLs”) that comply with the REAL ID Act of 2005 (“REAL ID Act” or “Act”) and regulations ^[1] [hereinafter “REAL ID-Compliant”].

In particular, the rule seeks to clarify the respective standards for state and federal authorities as they navigate the development of secure IDs under the law passed in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Under these new standards, DHS estimates that affected states will incur nearly $600 million in total costs over the next decade to bring their relevant ID programs into compliance.

TRACKING THE ADMINISTRATIONS

As we have already seen from executive orders and memos, the Biden Administration has provided plenty of contrasts with the Trump Administration on the regulatory front. And while there have been areas where the current administration has sought to broadly restore Obama-esque regulatory actions, there are also areas where it has charted its own course. Since the AAF RegRodeo data extend back to 2005, it is possible to provide weekly updates on how the top-level trends of President Biden’s regulatory record track with those of his two most recent predecessors. The following table provides the cumulative totals of final rules containing some quantified economic impact from each administration through this point in their respective terms.The REAL ID rule discussed above was the primary mover of the Biden Administration’s cost total this past week. Given the relative scale of that to-date total, however, that rule remained something of a rounding error. As for the other administrations covered here, there was minimal movement in the Trump-era totals. For the Obama Administration, thanks mostly to a reporting requirement under Dodd-Frank regarding real estate settlement disclosures, paperwork jumped by more than 17 million hours. Despite this sizable spike, the Obama-era paperwork total through this point in that administration was still 11 million hours lower than the Trump-era total through a similar point.

TOTAL BURDENS

Since January 1, the federal government has published $1.41 trillion in total net costs (with $1.29 trillion in new costs from finalized rules) and 125.6 million hours of net annual paperwork. burden increases (with 58.2 million hours coming from final rules).