Today, Friday the 30th, is the last federal workday of 2016.
And the printed version of the Federal Register, the daily depository of all things regulatory, has topped off at 97,110 pages, by far an all time record.
Skips and blanks will lower the official count a tad later when the National Archives issues final data, but not by much.
That dwarfs last year’s count of 80,260 pages, and it shatters the 2010 all-time record of 81,405 by 15,705 pages.
Indeed, the 2010 level was passed November 17, making each day since a new record-breaker.
It’s true that the Federal Register is not a great gauge, since it’s full of notices and such. But the sheer magnitude of it signals a new era in the Administrative State as opposed to a representative one, and a challenge to new president Donald Trump to do something about a runaway federal government.
We noted here last week that until Obama, ninety-thousand pages was unheard of. Up until this year, the 80,000 page mark shocked, having been passed just three times (in 2010, 2011 and 2015, all by Obama). In fact of the 10 highest-ever counts, Obama holds seven.
This chart shows the highest count of presidents since Gerald Ford, in ascending order.
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