The issuing of new federal regulations has virtually ceased under the government shutdown.
For the first time this week, the journal of new regulations and rules, the Federal Register, had just one page of regulations on Thursday. Friday it had two pages.
“Even compared to past shutdowns and slowdowns, this day stands as an unprecedented pause in the otherwise constantly churning regulatory state,” said Dan Goldbeck, a senior research analyst for regulatory policy at the American Action Forum, of Wednesday’s register that included two notices on one page.
He did not count the six other pages of boilerplate material and the title page.
In a reference to the prolonged government shutdown over border wall spending, he added, “While its ultimate resolution could come with some historically significant legislative agreement over border security measures, on the executive side, it has already made history.”
The publishing of regulations, which Trump has promised to slash, usually has a lag and was far higher when the shutdown began. But it has now dwindled and may continue that patter.
Goldbeck, who analyzed the trend in a new blog post for AAF, wrote, “For perspective, in the final, post-shutdown days of 2018, there were 2,005 pages (or an average of 501 per day) worth of activity in the Federal Register. That dwindled down to 30 on January 2nd, and now to one.”
This is the entirety of today’s issue of the Federal Register. One page. #shutdown #regulation pic.twitter.com/mQWbXxtUge
— Daniel Goldbeck (@DtheGman) January 3, 2019
That is even more remarkable when compared to the numbers after past shutdowns, he said.
And the two notices published in the one-page Federal Register Wednesday were not consequential, Goldbeck noted.
“This single-page issue contains a mere two ‘notices,’ which are essentially sub-regulatory administrative announcements. If one has a particular interest in either the terms of Small Business Administration disaster loans for recent storms in Illinois or an exhibition of ‘Egypt: The Time of Pharaohs’ in Cincinnati, then this may have been a compelling issue,” he wrote.
