Freedom Line Blog

Regardless of what you think of the political strategy at work, the federal shutdown we’ve been enduring over the last few days has been an object lesson in how much government we could cut without ever missing it — as I detail in my column this week. In the piece, I look primarily at the bloat in the federal employment rolls, but today brings some underreported news on another key metric: federal regulations.

Last year, the federal government completed work on 1,172 new regulations (less than 30 percent of the full portfolio it was working on). That comes out to about 23 new regulations every week, many of them with massive price tags attached (57 of last year’s new regs were estimated to have costs of at least $100 million apiece). Thus, this bit of news from The Hill is a pure delight:

The Federal Register is practically dried up due to the ongoing government shutdown. There are only two new rules announced for Monday’s edition, and both of them are relatively minor.

The two rules? One limits the hauls of vermillion snapper that commercial fisherman can take in through the rest of the year; the other sets up a temporary safety zone around a bridge in Texas where the Coast Guard is making repairs. Were that this was the way the Federal Register looked every week.