Federal regulations generally result from an act of Congress and are the means by which statutes are implemented and specific requirements are established. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (hereafter, the "Dodd-Frank Act," P.L. 111-203 , July 21, 2010) is a particularly noteworthy example of congressional delegation of rulemaking authority to federal agencies. A previous CRS report identified 330 provisions in the Dodd-Frank Act that require or permit the issuance of rules to implement the legislation. Nearly 80% of these 330 provisions assign rulemaking authorities or responsibilities to one of four agencies: the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FRS), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The regulations that these and other agencies will issue pursuant to the Dodd-Frank Act are expected to have a major effect on how the legislation is implemented. As one observer put it, the rules would "turn reform into reality." Shortly after the legislation was enacted, another observer said, "In most pieces of legislation like this, the real teeth is in the regulations." Another said that the Dodd-Frank Act "is complicated and contains substantial ambiguities, many of which will not be resolved until regulations are adopted." An article in the New York Times stated that the legislation is basically a 2,000-page missive to federal agencies, instructing regulators to address subjects ranging from derivatives trading to document retention. But it is notably short on specifics, giving regulators significant power to determine its impact—and giving partisans on both sides a second chance to influence the outcome. The manner in which Congress delegates rulemaking authority to federal agencies determines the amount of discretion the agencies have in crafting the rules and, conversely, the amount of control that Congress retains for itself. Some of the 330 rulemaking provisions in the Dodd-Frank Act are quite specific, stipulating the substance of the rules, whether certain consultative or rulemaking procedures should be used, and deadlines for their issuance or implementation. However, more than half of the 330 rulemaking provisions in the Dodd-Frank Act appear to be discretionary in nature, stating that certain agencies "may" issue rules to implement particular provisions, or that the agencies shall issue such rules as they "determine are necessary and appropriate." Therefore, the agencies may decide to promulgate rules regarding all, some, or none of these provisions, and often have broad discretion to decide what these rules will contain. In addition, there are numerous other provisions in the Dodd-Frank Act that require regulatory agencies to take certain actions, but do not specifically mention "regulations" or "rules." For example, Section 732 of the act amended Section 4d of the Commodity Exchange Act (7 U.S.C. § 6d), and states that the CFTC shall require that futures commission merchants and introducing brokers implement conflict-of-interest systems and procedures that (1) establish structural and institutional safeguards to ensure that the activities of any person within the firm relating to research or analysis of the price or market for any commodity are separated by appropriate informational partitions within the firm from the review, pressure, or oversight of persons whose involvement in trading or clearing activities might potentially bias the judgment or supervision of the persons; and (2) address such other issues as the Commission determines to be appropriate. It is possible that many of these kinds of provisions will, either by the agencies' choice or by legal necessity, be implemented through the rulemaking process. In his book Building a Legislative-Centered Public Administration , David H. Rosenbloom noted that rulemaking and lawmaking are functionally equivalent (both have the force of law), and that when agencies issue rules they, in effect, legislate. He went on to say that the "Constitution's grant of legislative power to Congress encompasses a responsibility to ensure that delegated authority is exercised according to appropriate procedures." Congressional oversight of rulemaking can address a variety of issues, including the substance of the rules issued pursuant to congressional delegations of authority and the process by which those rules are issued. For Congress to oversee the regulations being issued to implement the Dodd-Frank Act, it would help to have an early sense of what rules the agencies are going to issue, and when. The previously mentioned CRS report identifying the provisions in the act that require or permit rulemaking can be useful in this regard. However, the legislation did not indicate when some of the mandatory rules should be issued, some of the rules that the agencies are permitted (but not required) to issue may never be developed, and many of the rules that the agencies will issue may not be specifically mentioned in the act. One way for Congress to identify upcoming Dodd-Frank Act rules is by reviewing the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions (hereafter, Unified Agenda), which is published twice each year (usually in the spring and fall) by the Regulatory Information Service Center (RISC), a component of the U.S. General Services Administration, for the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). The Unified Agenda helps agencies fulfill two current transparency requirements: The Regulatory Flexibility Act (5 U.S.C. § 602) requires that all agencies publish semiannual regulatory agendas in the Federal Register describing regulatory actions that they are developing that may have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. Section 4 of Executive Order 12866 on "Regulatory Planning and Review" requires that all executive branch agencies "prepare an agenda of all regulations under development or review." The stated purposes of this and other planning requirements in the order are, among other things, to "maximize consultation and the resolution of potential conflicts at an early stage" and to "involve the public and its State, local, and tribal officials in regulatory planning." The executive order also requires that each agency prepare, as part of the fall edition of the Unified Agenda, a "regulatory plan" of the most important significant regulatory actions that the agency reasonably expects to issue in proposed or final form during the upcoming fiscal year. The Unified Agenda lists upcoming regulatory activities, by agency, in five separate categories or stages of the rulemaking process: prerule stage (e.g., advance notices of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) that are expected to be issued in the next 12 months); proposed rule stage (i.e., notices of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that are expected to be issued in the next 12 months, or for which the closing date of the comment period is the next step); final rule stage (i.e., final rules or other final actions that are expected to be issued in the next 12 months); long-term actions (i.e., items under development that agencies do not expect to take action on in the next 12 months); and completed actions (i.e., final rules or rules that have been withdrawn since the last edition of the Unified Agenda). All entries in the Unified Agenda have uniform data elements, including the department and agency issuing the rule, the title of the rule, its Regulation Identifier Number (RIN), an abstract describing the nature of action being taken, and a timetable showing the dates of past actions and a projected date (sometimes just the projected month and year) for the next regulatory action. Each entry also contains an element indicating the priority of the regulation (e.g., whether it is considered "economically significant" under Executive Order 12866, or whether it is considered a "major" rule under the Congressional Review Act). There is no penalty for issuing a rule without a prior notice in the Unified Agenda, and some prospective rules listed in the Unified Agenda never get issued, reflecting the fluid nature of the rulemaking process. Nevertheless, the Unified Agenda can help Congress and the public know what regulatory actions are about to occur; and it arguably provides federal agencies with the most systematic, government-wide method to alert the public about their upcoming proposed rules. A previously issued CRS report indicated that about three-fourths of the significant proposed rules published after having been reviewed by OIRA in 2008 were previously listed in the "proposed rule" section of the Unified Agenda. The July 7, 2011, edition of the Unified Agenda and Regulatory Plan is the second edition that RISC has compiled and issued after the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act. Federal agencies were required to submit data to RISC for the Unified Agenda by February 25, 2011. Therefore, the information in the Unified Agenda was current as of February 2011. This report examines the July 7, 2011, edition of the Unified Agenda and identifies upcoming proposed and final rules that agencies expect to issue pursuant to the Dodd-Frank Act in the next 12 months, as well as long-term actions. To identify those upcoming rules and actions, CRS searched all fields of the Unified Agenda (all agencies) using the term "Dodd-Frank," identifying items in the proposed rule and final rule stages of rulemaking and the "long-term actions" category. The results included all actions that were being issued pursuant to the Dodd-Frank Act. The results of the searches for proposed and final rules are provided in the Appendix to this report. For each upcoming proposed and final rule listed, the table identifies the department or agency expected to issue the rule, the title of the rule and its RIN, an abstract describing the anticipated rulemaking action, and the date that the agency expects to issue the proposed or final rule. The abstracts presented in the table were taken verbatim from the Unified Agenda entries. The entries in the table are organized by agency.