Browse regulations

Comprehensive maritime stability regulations covering vessel design, watertight integrity, buoyancy, and damage survivability for various vessel types including barges, MODUs, tugboats, OSVs, liftboats, and hopper dredges. Incorporates international maritime standards and specifies detailed engineering requirements for stability calculations, compartment flooding assumptions, and structural integrity under various loading conditions.

These regulations impose excessive compliance costs on maritime industry while creating barriers to entry for smaller operators. The detailed engineering requirements and complex stability calculations effectively function as a hidden tax, with compliance costs estimated at millions per vessel. The regulations also favor large established operators who can absorb these costs, while smaller operators face disproportionate burden. Much of this safety oversight could be handled by classification societies or industry self-regulation, reducing federal involvement while maintaining safety standards.

This regulation sets detailed stability, construction, and equipment standards for crane-equipped vessels, school ships, oceanographic research vessels, towing vessels, and sailing school vessels. It mandates specific righting arm curves, bulkhead requirements, subdivision rules, and design calculations to prevent capsizing and improve survivability.

Imposes heavy, prescriptive compliance costs on small operators (sailing schools, research outfits), stifles engineering innovation, raises barriers to entry, and duplicates safety assurances that private insurers and classification societies could provide more efficiently. States are better suited to tailor maritime safety rules to local waters, and common-law liability already incentivizes prudent design and operation.

Stability requirements for vessels carrying bulk hazardous cargoes (grain, liquefied gases, flammable liquids). Mandates authorization, incorporates international safety standards, and specifies technical stability calculations for tank vessels.

Deletion would cause catastrophic maritime accidents—loss of life, environmental disasters, economic damage—that far exceed compliance costs. The regulation uses objective engineering standards impossible to replicate through markets, which would otherwise suffer from systematic under-investment in safety. It also maintains US vessels' international competitiveness by meeting global standards.

Marine vessel subdivision and stability regulations covering structural design, watertight bulkheads, flooding standards, and damage survivability requirements for passenger and cargo vessels of various sizes and types.

These regulations impose massive compliance costs on vessel operators while creating barriers to entry that protect established shipping companies. The detailed technical requirements for bulkhead spacing, permeability calculations, and damage survivability create an expensive regulatory maze that small operators cannot navigate, effectively reducing competition in maritime transport. The extensive documentation requirements and mandatory third-party inspections add unnecessary overhead without meaningfully improving safety beyond what market forces and insurance requirements would naturally achieve.

Maritime safety regulations governing vessel construction, stability, and inspection requirements for U.S. vessels, including applicability standards, plan submission requirements, stability calculations, and operational guidelines.

These regulations ensure maritime safety through standardized vessel design, stability requirements, and inspection protocols that protect passengers, crew, and cargo from maritime hazards. The regulatory framework prevents accidents, capsizings, and structural failures that could result in loss of life and environmental disasters.

This regulation defines terms and establishes administrative procedures for Native American Programs under the Native American Programs Act of 1974, including eligibility criteria, funding mechanisms, and loan programs for Native Hawaiian economic development.

This program provides targeted economic development assistance to historically disadvantaged Native American and Native Hawaiian communities through structured loan programs and administrative frameworks that promote self-sufficiency and economic opportunity.

This regulation implements Executive Order 12372, establishing a process for state and local governments to review and comment on proposed federal financial assistance programs from ACTION (National Volunteer Agency). It requires the agency to publish eligible programs, allows states to select programs for review, mandates consultation with local officials, sets 30-60 day comment periods, and establishes procedures for responding to state process recommendations. The regulation explicitly creates no enforceable rights and exists for internal agency management.

This non-binding, discretionary consultation process creates administrative burdens and funding delays (30-60 days) without providing any enforceable constraints on federal power. States receive only the right to be notified and comment; the agency retains complete discretion to ignore recommendations with minimal justification. It adds another layer to the regulatory labyrinth while failing to meaningfully advance federalism or protect against overreach. The internal management benefits to the agency are outweighed by the compliance costs and delays imposed on both the agency and state governments.

These NEA regulations implement Executive Order 12372, requiring intergovernmental consultation before awarding federal financial assistance. They establish procedures for state and local officials to review, comment on, and make recommendations regarding NEA programs. States can opt into the process, and the NEA must consider state process recommendations, potentially accepting them, negotiating solutions, or providing written explanations. The regulation also allows states to simplify, consolidate, or substitute federally required state plans.

This regulation creates a procedural bureaucracy that delays NEA funding without clear benefit. The 60-day minimum comment period and mandatory state consultation inject uncertainty and administrative costs into grant-making, harming artists and organizations awaiting funding. While claiming to strengthen federalism, it merely layers federal process requirements onto states without actually reducing federal power. The regulation explicitly states it creates no enforceable rights, revealing its purely procedural nature that values process over artistic outcomes. The unseen costs include delayed projects, increased compliance burden, and political interference through state-level gatekeeping.

Implements Executive Order 12372, requiring NSF to consult state/local officials through designated 'state processes' before awarding federal financial assistance or direct development. Establishes procedures for state program selection, comment periods (30-60 days), recommendations, and a 10-day waiting period for decisions differing from state recommendations.

Adds bureaucratic overhead and delays to NSF research funding without justification. Compliance costs divert resources from scientific missions. Creates unnecessary political layer that distorts efficient allocation of research dollars and expands federal administrative reach under guise of federalism.

NSF regulation implementing Executive Order 12958 for handling classified national security information. NSF has no original classification authority, only derivative classification. Establishes procedures for classification, declassification review through a Classification Review Committee, safeguarding, and access controls. Includes provisions encouraging personnel to challenge improper classification and allows limited access for historical researchers and former presidential appointees under safeguards.

Protecting genuine national security secrets is a core, legitimate function of the federal government. This regulation implements constitutional authority for safeguarding information vital to national defense. It includes checks against overclassification and promotes transparency through challenge mechanisms. Deleting it would compromise national security without any compensating liberty benefit, and its administrative costs are minimal compared to the stakes.

This HHS regulation implements Executive Order 12372 by creating a formal process for state and local review of federal financial assistance and direct federal development. It allows states to opt into a consultation process, provides comment periods of 30-60 days, requires the agency to respond to state recommendations, and permits states to simplify or substitute planning requirements. It explicitly states it creates no enforceable rights.

Adds unnecessary bureaucratic delays and contributes to the 185,000-page Code of Federal Regulations without a compelling justification. The mandatory comment periods postpone programs and increase compliance costs while providing only marginal federalism benefits that could be achieved through voluntary coordination. Internal agency management procedures should not be codified as enforceable regulations.

Regulation establishes criteria for graduate medical education programs to reduce reliance on foreign physicians, requiring comprehensive plans with specific benchmarks and a 1983 phase-out deadline.

Obsolete 1983 deadline renders this protectionist regulation irrelevant; keeping it imposes unnecessary compliance burdens, legal uncertainty, and perpetuates a flawed federal intrusion into medical education that distorts physician labor markets and risks healthcare quality.

HHS rules implementing Equal Access to Justice Act, allowing fee awards to eligible small entities and individuals who prevail in adversary adjudications when the Department's position was not substantially justified or its demand was excessively high. Establishes net worth/employee limits, application procedures, documentation requirements, and fee caps ($125/hr for attorneys).

Legitimizes and perpetuates regulatory overreach by compensating victims rather than eliminating excessive regulations. Creates administrative burdens, perverse litigation incentives, and fee distortions while reducing pressure for structural reform. The existence of this mechanism acknowledges endemic agency overreach—the only solution is to shrink government's regulatory reach, not make its burdens more tolerable.

This regulation prescribes specific procedures for serving legal process (summonses, complaints, subpoenas) on HHS and its officials, including designated addresses, authorized recipients, and special rules for vaccine injury compensation petitions and Congressional subpoenas.

The regulation imposes unnecessary compliance burdens on private litigants while providing no clear public benefit. HHS could handle service through standard legal channels or internal guidelines; codifying these requirements in federal regulations creates bureaucratic overhead that increases legal complexity and costs without preventing harm or addressing market failure. The regulation primarily serves agency convenience at the expense of citizens' ability to efficiently access the courts.

Establishes FEMA policy for reviewing and approving State and local emergency plans for radiological emergencies at commercial nuclear power facilities, including requirements for exercises, public participation, and findings on plan adequacy.

Creates unnecessary federal bureaucracy for emergency planning that should be handled by states and localities directly. The $2+ trillion annual regulatory compliance cost burden is exacerbated by such federal oversight requirements that duplicate state/local capabilities and impose rigid federal standards on emergency response planning.