Browse regulations

Implements Privacy Act of 1974 procedures for OMB. Describes how individuals can request access to records about themselves, request amendments/corrections, and request accounting of disclosures. Includes verification requirements, appeal processes, and fee structure.

The Privacy Act itself represents federal overreach into areas better left to states or private governance. This implementing regulation adds bureaucratic complexity and compliance burden to OMB operations for minimal public benefit. The $0.10/page duplication fee creates a small revenue motive that could be handled more efficiently through existing record request mechanisms without dedicated Privacy Act infrastructure. Individual privacy rights can be adequately protected through common law torts and market forces rather than federal administrative procedures.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) adopts the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Guidance in 2 CFR part 200, making that guidance regulatory for EAC actions and grant administration.

Federalizing election administration violates the Tenth Amendment and imposes unnecessary compliance costs on state and local officials; the EAC itself represents unconstitutional overreach into state-run elections.

UniformAdministrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards (2 CFR Part 200) establishes standardized rules for receiving, spending, and auditing federal grant funds.

Imposes extensive compliance costs on recipients, creating administrative burdens and hidden taxes that outweigh its benefits; streamlined alternatives exist for ensuring proper use of funds without this heavy regulation.

Regulation establishes DFC's non-procurement debarment and suspension regime by adopting OMB guidance (2 CFR part 180) with DFC-specific supplements. It defines covered transactions, officials, and procedures, including a new debarment ground for refusing to remediate environmental, social, and human rights harm.

Duplicative of existing OMB debarment policy, adding unnecessary regulatory complexity and compliance costs. The DFC-specific provision allowing debarment for refusing environmental/social/human rights remediation creates a tool for political coercion and deters business participation, particularly from small firms that can least afford regulatory burdens.

This regulation mandates that all USAID-funded programs, projects, and commodities be marked with the USAID Identity (logo, tagline) to ensure transparency and consistent branding. It requires recipients to develop branding strategies, marking plans, and submit materials for approval, with exceptions and waivers allowed for specific cases. Noncompliance risks suspension/termination of funding.

The regulation imposes excessive bureaucratic burdens and compliance costs on small organizations and foreign recipients, with minimal clear public benefit. Centralizing branding control under USAID fosters regulatory capture and stifles local autonomy. Exceptions exist but are subject to restrictive approval processes. The rule's broad scope and enforcement mechanisms align with critiques of federal overreach, distorting incentives and creating undue administrative overhead without addressing core accountability needs effectively.

Implements disclosure requirements for USDA Federal financial assistance involving geospatial data, requiring agencies to include appropriate terms and conditions to ensure compliance with law, regulation, and policy.

Its transparency provisions ensure proper use of federal funds and prevent misuse of geospatial data, safeguarding public resources; removing it would reduce oversight and risk waste and fraud.

This regulation establishes comprehensive procedural requirements for handling research misconduct allegations in USDA-funded extramural research, including roles for ARIOs, OIG oversight, documentation mandates, and corrective actions. It aims to ensure research integrity but imposes extensive administrative burdens.

The regulation imposes significant compliance costs on small research institutions without proportional public benefit. It centralizes federal control over research integrity, which could be better managed at the state or institutional level under the Tenth Amendment. The bureaucracy risks regulatory capture and creates unintended inefficiencies, aligning with the observed pattern of regulations generating hidden costs rather than solving problems.

Prohibits federal contractors, grantees, and loan recipients from using appropriated funds to lobby government officials or Congress regarding covered federal actions. Requires certifications and disclosure filings (Standard Form-LLL) for awards exceeding $100,000 (contracts/grants) or $150,000 (loans), with quarterly update requirements. Imposes civil penalties of $10,000-$100,000 per violation and includes exceptions for 'reasonable compensation' for certain liaison and professional services.

This regulation imposes massive compliance costs on thousands of small businesses, nonprofits, and state/local governments while restricting legitimate political speech and advocacy. It creates complex, vague distinctions between allowable and prohibited activities that generate legal uncertainty and require expensive compliance infrastructure. The burden falls disproportionately on smaller entities (compliance costs per employee 30% higher for firms under 50). It duplicates existing lobbying disclosure regimes and bribery laws, offering minimal additional anti-corruption benefit while stifling legitimate communication with government officials. The regulation treats federal funds as 'tainted' when used for political speech—an arbitrary restriction on First Amendment rights that has no place in a free society. The unseen costs include chilling effects on advocacy, diversion of resources from productive activity to paperwork, and elevated barriers to entry protecting incumbent firms from competition.

This regulation establishes USDA's policies for debarment and suspension of individuals/organizations from participating in federal programs, implementing OMB guidance on nonprocurement transactions. It defines covered participants, transactions, exceptions, and procedures for checking SAM.gov database, with permanent debarment for fraud convictions.

This regulation creates administrative burdens that disproportionately harm small businesses, adds complexity to federal programs that should be eliminated under limited government principles, and represents bureaucratic mission creep rather than legitimate oversight. The $2 trillion annual regulatory compliance cost burden already imposes a hidden $14,000 tax on American households - this regulation contributes to that burden while failing to address the root problem of excessive federal intervention in the economy.

Regulation prohibits contractors who draft procurement specifications from bidding on those contracts and bars states from using geographic preferences in USDA entitlement program procurements to ensure fairness and prevent conflicts of interest.

Deleting this would allow contractors to write specs favoring themselves, increasing corruption and waste, and permit geographic preferences that distort competition and raise costs, harming taxpayers and undermining fair market competition.

Regulation establishes competitive award requirements for USDA grants and implements intergovernmental review under Executive Order 12372, ensuring state/local consultation on federal programs affecting them. Requires publishing opportunities on Grants.gov, independent reviewers, and conflict-of-interest safeguards. Allows exceptions for small awards, continuing work, or emergencies.

Deletion would undermine competition in federal grantmaking, enabling cronyism and favoritism; eliminate state/local consultation requirements, centralizing power in Washington and violating Tenth Amendment federalism principles; and reduce transparency. The administrative burden is minimal compared to the costs of corruption and concentrated power.

USDA policy outlining procedures for awarding agencies and prime recipients to request waivers from the Buy America preference, including required submission instructions and supporting materials.

The rule adds costly administrative overhead with minimal public benefit, creating compliance burdens and regulatory capture without clear justification.

Defines terms for USDA's administrative requirements under 2 CFR part 200, including conflict of interest policies for federal financial assistance awards

Adds unnecessary bureaucratic complexity with extensive definitions and conflict of interest requirements that increase compliance costs without demonstrably improving transparency or reducing corruption, while creating barriers to free enterprise through administrative burdens.

This regulation implements HHS-specific requirements for federal award administration, supplementing OMB's Uniform Guidance (2 CFR 200). It covers conflict of interest policies for agencies, special rules for for-profit recipients (no profit except SBIR/STTR, restricted program income use), Federal entity award restrictions, non-discrimination requirements (including Bostock-based interpretation covering sexual orientation/gender identity), religious exemption procedures, cost principles for hospitals conducting research, indirect cost rate limitations, and unallowable costs (including ACA mandate penalties).

This regulatory overlay duplicates and complicates the already-voluminous Uniform Guidance with HHS-specific variations that add administrative burden without clear justification. The conflict of interest policies, while well-intentioned, represent a federal micromanagement of state and local agency operations better handled through state ethics laws. The for-profit restrictions (zero-profit rule, program income limitations) distort incentives and discourage commercial participation in health research, reducing innovation and competition. The Bostock interpretation extends federal anti-discrimination mandates into areas traditionally governed by state law and religious institutions' autonomy, raising constitutional federalism concerns and triggering burdensome religious exemption processes. The hospital cost principles create an accounting regime that advantages large institutions with compliance capacity while excluding smaller providers. Cumulatively, these rules exemplify bureaucratic accretion—layering complex, contradictory requirements on top of existing frameworks—that imposes significant compliance costs on research institutions, healthcare providers, and state/local governments while providing minimal accountability improvement over the baseline Uniform Guidance. The unseen costs include reduced research participation, higher healthcare delivery costs, and erosion of Tenth Amendment principles.

This regulation provides standardized definitions for key terms used in federal grants and assistance programs under 2 CFR part 200, including terms like 'Federal award,' 'indirect cost,' 'cost objective,' and others to ensure consistency in administration and compliance.

Deleting these definitions would create confusion and inconsistency in federal grant administration, likely increasing compliance costs as recipients and agencies would face uncertainty about term meanings, potentially leading to more errors, waste, and actually higher administrative burdens than the minimal cost of maintaining these clarifications.