Browse regulations

Federal regulation mandating design, construction, and operational standards for underground storage tanks to prevent groundwater contamination from petroleum and hazardous substance releases.

The $2 trillion annual regulatory burden includes disproportionate compliance costs for small businesses (gas stations, farms, etc.) that are 30% higher per employee than large corporations. This federal mandate violates Tenth Amendment federalism by preempting state and local groundwater protection regulation. The one-size-fits-all approach eliminates regulatory innovation and competition among states. Unseen costs include barriers to entry protecting incumbents, regulatory capture through technical standards, and the 185,000-page CFR's incomprehensibility. The same environmental goals could be more efficiently achieved through state-level regulation, tort liability, property rights enforcement, and market-based mechanisms like insurance requirements.

This regulation mandates electronic reporting for NPDES permittees and states, establishing data standards, submission deadlines, and waiver processes to ensure nationally consistent pollution discharge data for the Clean Water Act.

Federalizes reporting procedures that could be handled flexibly by states or regulated entities, adding compliance costs and bureaucratic expansion that exceed benefits; violates Tenth Amendment principles of federalism; waiver system acknowledges the mandate's one-size-fits-all flaws.

This regulation establishes procedural rules for debarment proceedings within the United States Postal Service, defining roles, hearing procedures, evidence standards, and appeal processes for administrative actions that can exclude individuals or entities from doing business with the Postal Service.

This is an internal administrative procedure for a government monopoly that should be subject to market competition. Debarment proceedings are a form of bureaucratic punishment that protects incumbent contractors rather than serving customers. The entire framework creates regulatory overhead without providing any benefit to postal service users who have no choice but to use the USPS monopoly.

Regulation implements the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act on National Forest System lands, protecting fossils while allowing limited casual collecting of common invertebrate and plant fossils (25 lbs/day, 100 lbs/year) without permit. Research requires permits, commercial collection is prohibited, and collected specimens must be curated in approved repositories with detailed reporting.

Substantial administrative costs and bureaucratic hurdles impede scientific progress and amateur participation. The commercial prohibition eliminates market incentives for fossil discovery and care. Overly complex permit and curation requirements create barriers that outweigh preservation benefits; simpler, less restrictive measures would suffice.

Federal grant program from Dept. of Education providing training subsidies to Native Americans for education careers, with mandatory service or repayment requirements for participants. Funds go to tribes, colleges, and LEAs to train teachers, administrators, and support staff to serve Indian students. Includes extensive eligibility rules, payback provisions, and competitive preferences for tribal applicants.

Unconstitutional federal overreach into education (10th Amendment), discriminates by race in distributing benefits, creates costly bureaucracy to track payback, distorts education labor markets, and can be handled more efficiently by states, tribes, and private providers. The federal government has no legitimate role in funding teacher training for specific racial groups.

Establishes ethical rules, complaint procedures, and outside practice limitations for Navy/Marine Corps attorneys and certain civilian attorneys under JAG supervision. Covers military judge advocates, civilian DoN attorneys, reservists on duty, and private attorneys representing clients in JAG-supervised proceedings.

These regulations are essential to maintain ethical standards, protect client confidentiality, and prevent conflicts of interest in the military justice system. Without them, service members facing courts-martial, administrative separations, or other serious proceedings would lack basic protections against incompetent or unethical legal representation. The risks of miscarriages of justice, compromised national security information, and erosion of trust in military legal institutions far outweigh the minimal compliance costs.

Implements the Sunken Military Craft Act by establishing permit requirements for archaeological, historical, or educational activities that disturb, remove, or injure sunken military craft and terrestrial military craft under Navy jurisdiction. Prohibits unauthorized activities, sets detailed application and reporting requirements, and outlines enforcement procedures.

Deletion would eliminate the only federal mechanism preventing the desecration of military graves, looting of irreplaceable historical wrecks, and unregulated handling of human remains. The regulation protects federal property and national heritage while burdening only the tiny fraction of Americans who intentionally interact with these sites.

Army regulation governing military police records management, including privacy protections for personally identifiable information (PII) and juveniles, FOIA/Privacy Act compliance procedures, sex offender registration requirements on installations, DNA collection protocols, background check processes, domestic violence reporting, and military protective orders.

Deleting this regulation would undermine essential privacy safeguards for military law enforcement records, eliminate standardized procedures for information sharing with civilian agencies, weaken sex offender tracking on installations, and create inconsistent DNA collection practices. It implements critical requirements of the Privacy Act, FOIA, and SORNA while providing a necessary procedural framework that balances legitimate military policing needs with individual rights—coordination that would be difficult to achieve through ad hoc alternatives.

This DoD regulation establishes uniform procedures for the disposition of Defense Department personal property, including disposal of excess property and scrap, as well as donation, loan, and exchange programs across all DoD Components. It implements statutory authority and defines responsibilities for property management.

Deleting this would lead to waste, inefficiency, and safety risks from improper handling of hazardous materials, ammunition, and ordnance. The donation program provides valuable equipment to schools and nonprofits. Without standardized procedures, taxpayers would face higher costs and communities would be exposed to dangerous materials mishandling.

Establishes the National Language Service Corps (NLSC) program to provide DoD and other federal agencies with temporary foreign language services from U.S. citizen consultants. The program creates a registry of language-proficient Americans who can be activated for short-term assignments (less than one year) to meet surge or emergency language needs. Members are hired as excepted service employees under 5 U.S.C. 3109, undergo language proficiency testing using ILR scale, and are managed through interagency agreements with administrative support from DoD Human Resources Activity.

Creates a redundant federal language consultant program that duplicates existing government contracting and hiring mechanisms. Private sector and academic institutions already provide foreign language services more efficiently without taxpayer-funded federal registries. The program adds bureaucratic overhead, compliance costs, and regulatory complexity while achieving no unique benefit that couldn't be accomplished through standard procurement channels.

This regulation establishes the framework for determining fair and reasonable payment rates for civil air carriers participating in the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) program, which provides airlift capacity augmentation to the Department of Defense during emergencies. The regulation sets uniform rates based on historical costs, operational data, and negotiated methodologies, with USTRANSCOM as the rate setter. It governs contracts where DoD awards are tied to carriers' CRAF commitments, excluding competitive contracts and domestic CRAF from uniform rate provisions.

This regulation represents a form of industrial policy that distorts market pricing for military airlift services. By mandating uniform rates based on historical cost data rather than competitive bidding, it prevents price discovery and creates artificial price floors that may exceed what free market competition would establish. The CRAF program effectively subsidizes participating carriers through guaranteed business in peacetime, creating a moral hazard where carriers may overcommit aircraft to receive favorable rates. The regulatory framework adds compliance costs and bureaucratic overhead without clear evidence that uniform rates produce better outcomes than competitive procurement. Market forces should determine military airlift pricing, with DoD paying fair market rates for services rendered rather than maintaining a complex ratemaking bureaucracy.

DoD policy establishing procedures for providing assistance to non-Government entertainment media productions, including script review, access to military installations, technical advisors, and reimbursement for expenses incurred.

Federal government has no legitimate role in subsidizing or coordinating entertainment media. This regulation creates an expensive bureaucracy that wastes taxpayer money on script review, provides privileged access to military assets for selected productions, and blurs the line between government and entertainment. Entertainment companies should bear their own production costs without government involvement.

Federal regulation requiring DoD contractors to report cyber incidents involving covered defense information within 72 hours, with voluntary participation in a cybersecurity information sharing program between government and defense contractors.

Creates massive compliance burden on small businesses with no constitutional basis, while enabling government surveillance of private networks under the guise of 'voluntary' information sharing. The $2 trillion regulatory compliance cost burden disproportionately harms small contractors who cannot afford dedicated cybersecurity teams, effectively protecting large incumbents from competition.

This regulation implements the Military Lending Act by capping the Military Annual Percentage Rate (MAPR) at 36% for consumer credit extended to active-duty service members and their dependents. It defines coverage, requires pre-obligation disclosure of MAPR, mandates calculation including various fees, and prohibits practices like rollovers, mandatory arbitration, and wage assignments.

The MAPR cap is a price control that reduces credit availability for service members, distorts market pricing, and pushes borrowers toward unregulated lenders. Compliance costs are passed to all consumers and create administrative burdens. Paternalistic restrictions violate liberty principles and produce unintended harms that outweigh intended protections.

This regulation establishes procedures for authorized personnel to conduct historical research in Department of Defense records, covering security clearances, access protocols, copying procedures, and review processes for both classified and unclassified information.

Americans would be worse off if this regulation was deleted because it ensures proper handling of sensitive military records while enabling legitimate historical research. The procedures protect classified information, maintain record integrity, and provide structured access for researchers, preventing unauthorized disclosure of national security information.