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  • 2016-11-18 (xsd:date)
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  • Obama Sets Record With 572 Pages of New Regulations in One Day? (en)
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  • On 17 November 2016, libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute published an article that reported that President Barack Obama had added 572 pages to the Federal Register. This was interpreted by numerous dubious publications to mean that Obama had, in just one day, added hundreds of pages of new regulations to the books: The Federal Register is a daily publication in which federal agencies list documents that include: Notices; Proposed Rules; Rules; and Presidential Documents. Not all of the documents are associated with new regulations. Documents published under Notices, for example, are generally items like public meeting announcements or requests for public comment on a matter. While Presidential Documents may include executive orders, they may also be holiday proclamations. Thus, the interpretation that more pages in the Federal Register means more new regulations is misleading. The Congressional Research Service explained in a 4 October 2016 report that while Federal Register page counts are sometimes employed as measures of total federal regulatory burden, the method isn't a reliable one: Nevertheless, the Competitive Enterprise Institute article prompted a string of stories that 572 pages (or 527 pages, depending on the presence of a repeating typo) of new regulations were added in one day: While WND claims the page count came on Thursday, which would have been 17 November 2016, we actually found that on that date, 652 pages were published under 127 total documents. It seems the Competitive Enterprise Institute is actually referring to 15 November 2016 (which would have been a Tuesday, although CEI doesn't specify the date), when 572 pages were published, or a total of 83 documents. In other words, the aggregate page count reported by Competitive Enterprise Institute is accurate, but the characterization that they represent 572 pages of new regulations is misleading. Jim Hemphill, special assistant to the director for the Office of the Federal Register, told us that documents published under Notices are not regulatory in nature. On 15 November 2016, of the 83 documents published on the Federal Register, 72 of them were Notices. There were four Proposed Rules, and seven Rules published. Obama did not file any presidential documents that day. Hemphill added that a document may include pages of explainer text while the regulation itself may be very short. When the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services publishes reimbursement rate changes, for example, the documents tend to be massive — and when that happens, there may be a spike in page counts in the Federal Register. As noted in the CRS report, the yearly tally of Final Rules has steadily declined since 1976, when there were 7,401. In 2015, there were 3,410. But even this number isn't a reliable representation of new regulations: While it is true that on 15 November 2016, 572 pages were published in the Federal Register, it is misleading to claim the number is indicative of a record high in new federal regulations. The Competitive Enterprise Institute did not return our request for comment. (en)
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