The Week in Regulation: August 27-31

Regulatory costs increased slowly this week, $356 million, pushed by four Dodd-Frank capital requirements.  Regulators also published more than 1.6 million hours of paperwork compliance.

Federal agencies proposed 52 rules and implemented 74 final rules.  Federal agencies issued 13 new documents “deemed significant under [Executive Order] 12866,” bringing the yearly revised total to 459 according to the Federal Register; the federal government has issued 53,768 pages of regulations in 2012.

ObamaCare

There were no notable ObamaCare rulemakings this week.  Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed an estimated $20.6 billion in private-sector burdens, approximately $7.2 billion in costs to the states, and 63.2 million annual paperwork hours.

Dodd-Frank

There were four notable Dodd-Frank rulemakings this week.  All of the regulations, one final and three proposed rules from the Comptroller of the Currency, cover capital requirements and market risk. 

The one final rule, Risk-Based Capital Guidelines, “includes alternative methodologies for calculating standardized specific risk capital requirements for debt and securitized positions.”  The rule imposes $180 million in costs and more than 84,000 paperwork burden hours.

Agencies also published a proposal to implement Basel III capital requirements. This regulation would implement “a new common equity tier I minimum capital requirement and a supplementary leverage ratio that incorporates a broader set of exposures in the denominator measure.”  Initial estimates project $101 million in costs and 120,768 paperwork hours.

Finally, the Comptroller of the Currency proposed two “Regulatory Capital Rules:” the standardized approach and the advanced approach.  Combined, they impose $32 million in costs and 1.4 million paperwork burden hours.

Click here to view the total estimated compliance costs from Dodd-Frank; since passage the legislation has produced more than 46.8 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $8.2 billion in direct compliance costs.  Based on calculations from the Financial Services Roundtable, Dodd-Frank regulations would require 23,427 employees to file federal paperwork.

A Note on Notices

This week federal agencies published 519 notices.  In these notices, agencies typically request new or revised paperwork burdens from the Office of Management and Budget.  These notices are generally not final, merely requests with a comment period.

Agencies requested 48.2 million paperwork burden hours, the equivalent of forcing 24,127 employees into red tape compliance.  The associated costs of these burdens: $337 million.

Total Burdens

At the current pace, the published regulatory burden for 2012 will exceed $94 billion.  Since January 1, the federal government has imposed $63.3 billion in compliance costs and more than 115.2 million annual paperwork burden hours.  For comparison, it took 7 million hours to build the Empire State Building.  

Click here for our comprehensive database of regulations and rulemakings promulgated in 2012.