Browse regulations

Establishes policy for criminal history checks on individuals providing child care services to minors under 18 in DoD programs, requiring background investigations, suitability determinations, and ongoing monitoring to protect child welfare.

Protects vulnerable children from potential harm by screening caregivers; the costs of abuse and exploitation far exceed compliance costs, and the regulation addresses a clear market failure where parents cannot independently verify caregiver safety.

This DoD regulation establishes uniform entrance qualification standards for enlistment, appointment, and induction into all U.S. Military Services, including age, citizenship, education, aptitude (AFQT scores), medical fitness, physical fitness, character/conduct (criminal history), and drug/alcohol requirements. It delegates implementation to Military Secretaries while mandating annual reviews and waiver procedures for exceptions.

Americans would be worse off without these standards: military readiness and national security would collapse. The regulation ensures service members can perform demanding duties, maintain discipline, and protect the nation. These internal personnel standards are constitutionally authorized, affect only volunteers, and cannot be efficiently replaced by market mechanisms given the military's monopoly on legitimate force. Removing them would endanger troops, degrade effectiveness, and compromise defense—a cost far exceeding minimal compliance burdens on those choosing to serve.

Establishes the Family Advocacy Program (FAP) to address child abuse and domestic abuse in military communities through prevention, intervention, treatment, and reporting systems across all DoD components.

This regulation protects vulnerable children and domestic abuse victims in military families. Without it, there would be no coordinated system to identify, prevent, or treat abuse in military communities, leaving children and spouses without protection or support services.

Establishes DoD policy and procedures for providing early intervention services (EIS) and special education to infants, toddlers, and children with disabilities in DoD schools and communities, implementing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) for military families and DoD personnel.

Military families face unique challenges including frequent relocations and overseas assignments that create barriers to accessing consistent special education services. This regulation ensures uniform protection of IDEA rights across all DoD installations, preventing service gaps that would occur if families had to navigate different state systems with each move. The centralized DoD approach provides essential continuity and equal access that would be impossible through fragmented state-level systems.

Venezuela-specific sanctions program blocking property and interests of designated persons/entities under national emergency declarations, with extensive licensing procedures and exceptions for humanitarian/legal services

Sanctions create significant unseen costs through market distortions, supply chain disruptions, and humanitarian impacts while often failing to achieve political objectives. The regulatory complexity and compliance burden disproportionately harms civilians and small businesses while enabling government control over economic activity.

Regulation implements the RESTORE Act, establishing the Gulf Coast Restoration Trust Fund to allocate Deepwater Horizon penalty money among five components: Direct Component (state grants), Comprehensive Plan Component (Council projects), Spill Impact Component (state plans), NOAA Science Program, and Centers of Excellence Research Grants. It sets eligibility criteria, administrative cost limits (3%), reporting, auditing, and award procedures.

Exceeds constitutional authority under the Tenth Amendment by federalizing local economic and environmental restoration; imposes costly bureaucratic overhead (3% administrative cap plus hidden compliance burdens) on cash-strapped Gulf communities; distorts incentives by providing windfall federal funds that crowd out market-driven and state-level solutions; and creates regulatory capture risks through interagency council dominated by federal agencies.

Federal regulation dictating precise procedures and complex formulas for distributing offshore mineral leasing revenues to Gulf Coast states and coastal political subdivisions, including GOMESA Phase I/II revenue sharing with inverse-distance calculations, population and coastline allocations, reporting requirements, and suspense account management.

Hidden compliance costs and bureaucracy ($2 trillion systemic burden), violates Tenth Amendment federalism, distorts energy markets with centrally-planned allocation formulas, creates impossible-to-understand rule of law violations spanning 185,000+ pages, and represents wealth redistribution that should occur through free markets or state-level agreements rather than federal micromanagement.

MSHA charges cost-based hourly fees for approval and certification services for mining equipment. Fees cover application processing, testing, approval decisions, and post-approval audits. The fee is calculated from direct and indirect costs of the Approval and Certification Center. The system includes fee estimates, pre-authorization options, and charges actual costs if lower than estimates.

This regulatory approval program imposes unnecessary costs and barriers to entry that stifle innovation, especially for small businesses. It duplicates potential private certification services, exceeds constitutional federalism limits on federal power, and creates uncertainty through discretionary fee adjustments. The hidden tax of compliance exceeds any marginal safety benefit that could be achieved through market mechanisms like liability, insurance, and industry standards.

This regulation establishes rules for multiemployer pension plans to apply for partition under ERISA Section 4233, allowing plans to split into original and successor plans to avoid insolvency, with PBGC providing financial assistance to the successor plan for guaranteed benefits.

Creates a massive taxpayer liability by allowing PBGC to subsidize failing multiemployer pension plans through partitions, effectively socializing pension losses and encouraging moral hazard in union-managed plans that should be responsible for their own financial decisions.

Federal notification requirements for pension plan events and funding failures under ERISA and Internal Revenue Code

Creates excessive bureaucratic compliance costs for businesses without meaningful participant protection benefits. The notification requirements duplicate existing SEC filings and impose $2+ billion in annual compliance costs on small businesses while providing minimal actual benefit to plan participants who already have statutory protections.

This regulation implements employee protection provisions from the National Transit Systems Security Act and Federal Railroad Safety Act, establishing procedures for handling retaliation complaints when employees report safety concerns, refuse to work in hazardous conditions, or engage in protected activities related to transportation safety and security.

This creates a massive federal bureaucracy that federalizes workplace safety matters that should be handled at state/local level. The extensive procedures, investigations, and penalties impose significant compliance costs on transportation employers while duplicating state-level protections. Small businesses face disproportionate burden from these regulatory requirements.

This regulation implements Sarbanes-Oxley Act Section 806 whistleblower protections, administered by OSHA. It creates a comprehensive federal administrative process for employees to file retaliation complaints against employers for reporting securities fraud violations. The rules cover filing procedures (within 180 days), investigation standards (prima facie showing), preliminary orders with reinstatement and backpay, administrative law judge hearings, Administrative Review Board appeals, and settlement processes. It applies to publicly traded companies and rating organizations, prohibiting retaliation against employees who provide information to regulators, Congress, or supervisors, or participate in related proceedings.

This creates a costly federal bureaucracy duplicating existing protections. The SEC already operates a whistleblower bounty program; state tort law handles wrongful discharge. Federalizing employment retaliation claims violates Tenth Amendment federalism, imposing disproportionate compliance burdens on small businesses while benefiting large incumbents who can afford dedicated compliance operations. The administrative process—with its 60-day investigations, mandatory preliminary reinstatement, and multi-level appeals—chills legitimate personnel decisions, encourages frivolous claims, and adds to the $2 trillion regulatory burden without improving outcomes beyond what market mechanisms and state law already provide. The unseen costs include destroyed at-will employment doctrine, stifled risk-taking, and regulatory capture incentives for OSHA to expand its jurisdiction.

Regulation governs the H-2B visa program for temporary non-agricultural foreign workers, requiring employers to obtain labor certification proving no qualified U.S. workers are available and that foreign worker employment won't harm U.S. workers' wages/conditions. It imposes wage floors, work guarantees (3/4 of workdays), and corresponding employment obligations extending to all workers doing similar work, enforced by DOL's Wage and Hour Division with penalties and debarment.

This regulation artificially restricts labor markets, imposes costly mandates (prevailing wages, 3/4 work guarantee) that raise business costs and consumer prices, and creates a compliance burden that disproportionately harms small employers. It substitutes central planning for price signals, protecting incumbent workers at the expense of job creation and economic efficiency. The enforcement apparatus expands bureaucratic power while doing nothing to prevent genuine fraud or contract breaches, which state laws and courts already address. The net effect is reduced opportunity, higher prices for goods/services, and regulatory capture by those seeking protection from competition.

Department of Justice procedural regulations implementing the Freedom of Information Act, detailing request submission, processing procedures, routing, consultations, referrals, appeals, fee structures, and protections for confidential commercial information and classified materials.

FOIA is vital for government transparency and accountability, allowing citizens to monitor federal power. These procedures implement the law effectively, ensuring consistent, orderly processing of requests with appropriate exemptions. Deleting them would create chaos, arbitrary denials, and undermine the statute's purpose of preventing government secrecy.

Establishes procedural requirements for estates to elect special use valuation for woodlands and qualified real property under IRC §2032A, allowing valuation based on current use rather than highest and best use for estate tax purposes.

Provides clear, simple election procedures that enable families to preserve woodlands and farms across generations without forced sale due to estate taxes. Deleting it would create uncertainty, deny estates this tax benefit, and likely result in higher estate taxes forcing liquidation of productive land.