Regulation

Today, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule to curb sulfur emissions in gasoline.  The proposal, so-called Tier-3, would cut sulfur levels by more than 60 percent, or down to 10 parts per million.  The resulting pollution decreases aim to cut smog and improve the efficiency of passenger vehicles. 

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) added five regulations to the Federal Register this week.  Combined, the five final rules include $100 million in costs and more than 300,000 paperwork burden hours; none of the rules quantified benefits.  For the week, regulators published $255 million in costs and added 288,000 hours of paperwork.

Regulatory Toplines

$12 Billion in New Regulations in January, $15.8 Billion Potentially on Tap for February

AAF Proposes Regulatory Reform That Promotes Economic Growth

WASHINGTON – In conjunction with The Atlantic’s event, Manufacturing’s Next Chapter, AAF Director of Regulatory Policy, Sam Batkins, outlines the regulatory burden on the manufacturing industry, how it directly impacts consumers, and explains the pressing need for regulatory reform to steer course to smarter regulation.

Regulatory Impact on Manufacturing

Over the course of just four days, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released three new regulations that account for 797 pages, $9.1 billion in new costs, and 10.6 million additional paperwork burden hours.

Breakdown

Medicaid, CHIP, and Exchanges: Eligibility and Enrollment

• Cost: $2.6 billion
• Paperwork: 518,432 burden hours
• Quantified Benefits: $0

Standards for the Growing, Harvesting, Packing, and Holding of Produce for Human Consumption

Despite a pronounced regulatory slowdown before Election Day, regulators still managed to add $236.7 billion in regulations. 

Derivatives trading is one of Dodd-Frank’s primary regulatory targets. Many agencies have already proposed or implemented new standards on these financial instruments. On October 18, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released its proposed rule seeking to regulate security-based swaps. The pre-publication version is 501 pages.

EPA published its long-awaited final rule for 2017 to 2025 vehicle fuel efficiency standards this week.  The government estimates costs between $61 and $156 billion, with only a few thousand paperwork burden hours.  The rule estimates benefits between $243 billion and $639 billion.

Regulatory Toplines

Since passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the American Action Forum (AAF) has tracked the state of its regulatory implementation. To date, the ACA has imposed a total of $27.6 billion in new regulations – at least $20.4 billion in lifetime costs on private entities and $7.2 billion in increased burdens on state budgets. In this paper AAF examines how this $27.6 billion in new costs break down on a state-by-state level. The data show that five states will endure at least $1 billion in ACA regulatory costs.

Regulators published only seven proposed or final rules this week with cost or paperwork burdens.  However, EPA finalized a rule setting the “volume of biomass-based diesel” for 2013.  This regulation headlined a week with $3.5 billion in new costs and more than 10,000 paperwork burden hours.