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On November 20, the U.S. Administration released its semiannual regulatory agenda, detailing the rules that federal agencies will make top priorities in the next year. The Fall 2015 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions contains hundreds of rules in the works at agencies across the government, including many that have been in the pipeline for years. The new agenda updates progress on many of the rules, providing new insight about the president’s regulatory priorities during his last months in office.
The Fall 2015 Unified Agenda reports on 3,297 rules and regulations at the “active,” “completed” and “long-term” stages, many of them holdovers from previous reports. This is down from 3,415 last year.
Of the Unified Agenda’s 3,000-plus rules in the pipeline, there is a costly subset deemed “economically significant.” These are projected to have economic effects of at least $100 million annually (usually upward, but sometimes downward). Economically significant rules and regulations went up in every category this past year, even as overall rule counts are lower. The Fall 2015 Unified Agenda reports on 218 “economically significant” rules and regulations at the “active,” “completed” and “long-term” stages.
IPC staff will be reviewing the agendas of key regulatory agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Departments of Commerce, the Department of Labor, and working with the Government Relations and Environmental, Health and Safety Committees to review the status of rules affecting our membership. IPC members are encouraged to review the agendas as well and contact IPC’s government relations staff with any concerns.
