Or as Biden would call it, this is a big f*cking deal.

WASHINGTON – The administration issued a record amount of heft in the federal rule book in 2015 as President Obama’s team, carrying out his orders to work around Congress, pushed his expansive government agenda on environmental, labor and Wall Street policy.

With one day to go, the administration added 81,611 pages to the Federal Register, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s count of the official record-keeping digest of federal agencies’ rule-making. It’s the highest total on record and the third time Mr. Obama has crossed the 80,000-page level during his presidency, the institute’s Clyde Wayne Crews calculated.

“This is the pen and phone era, and the president has made clear he’s going to go around Congress when he gets the chance,” Mr. Crews said. “We expected Congress to do something about it, but it didn’t.”

Instead, it was the federal court system that challenged the executive branch in 2015, and Mr. Obama was dealt several significant defeats in front of judges who shut down two of his biggest initiatives: to rewrite immigration law and to extend the hand of the federal government to permitting decisions throughout the country.

All told, the administration has proposed 2,334 rules and finalized 3,378 rules and regulations during the year, Mr. Crews said.