Browse regulations

This subchapter imposes comprehensive prescriptive safety and construction standards on offshore mobile drilling units, covering fire protection (classified bulkheads/decks), lifesaving equipment, accommodation spaces, hazardous electrical locations, ventilation systems, and general design. It incorporates by reference ASTM, IMO, and NFPA standards, requiring Coast Guard approvals and accepting only specified equivalents.

DELETE: This regulation exemplifies destructive central planning through hyper-detailed technical specifications that stifle innovation, protect incumbents, and impose massive hidden costs. The prescriptive requirements—down to exact measurements, materials, and fire test curves—create prohibitive barriers for small operators while raising energy costs for all Americans. The 'Commandant's' vast discretion to approve alternatives invites regulatory capture and cronyism. Unseen consequences include lost technological progress, reduced domestic energy production, higher consumer prices, and diversion of resources from productive economic activity to compliance paperwork—all while doing nothing that market-driven safety standards, tort law, and insurance underwriting couldn't achieve more efficiently and dynamically.

Federal regulation governing design, construction, equipment, inspection, and operation of mobile offshore drilling units (MODUs) under U.S. flag. Requires Coast Guard certification, regular inspections, specific safety equipment, drydocking, and compliance with incorporated industry standards (API, ABS, NFPA). Preempts state and local regulations in same field.

Keeping this regulation imposes massive compliance costs passed to consumers as higher energy prices - a hidden tax that suppresses domestic production. It creates barriers to entry favoring large incumbents, exemplifies regulatory capture through industry-written standards, and violates federalism by preempting state experimentation. Safety can be achieved cheaper through tort liability, insurance markets, and contractual arrangements without bureaucratic overhead. The costs are concrete and borne by all Americans; the marginal safety benefits are speculative.

Procedures under the Privacy Act allowing individuals to access and correct their records in the White House Conference Delegate/Alternate Certification File maintained by the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science.

This regulation imposes ongoing administrative burdens—staff time, verification, copying, and record-keeping—for a file that serves no current governmental purpose. The White House Conference occurred decades ago; the commission likely no longer exists, making this deadwood. Compliance costs are a hidden tax with zero public benefit. Privacy protections can exist without maintaining obsolete records systems.

Regulation prohibits using Legal Services Corporation (LSC) funds for criminal proceedings, with narrow exceptions for court appointments that don't impair civil mission, representation arising from civil matters, and Indian tribal court cases for eligible persons.

Deleting this restriction would permit LSC taxpayer funds to finance criminal defense, expanding federal overreach into state and private domains and diverting resources from civil legal aid—the program's core mission. It maintains fiscal discipline and prevents mission creep.

This regulation prohibits the Legal Services Corporation and its recipients from using federal funds for partisan political activities, restricts employees and attorneys from engaging in political campaigns, candidate support, voter registration drives, and using official authority for electoral influence, while preserving attorneys' ability to provide legal assistance to eligible clients.

Deleting this would allow federal legal aid funds to be used for partisan politics, undermining the program's mission to assist the poor and risking coercion of clients; it maintains a necessary firewall that would be hard to achieve through less explicit means.

Federal grant program (90% federal share) providing shelter and services to runaway/homeless youth through HHS-administered grants to community organizations. Imposes extensive compliance requirements including background checks, core competencies, non-discrimination mandates, reporting, training, and coordination obligations.

Regulatory costs are substantial: compliance burdens divert nonprofit resources from direct services. Unseen effects include federal dependency distorting local priorities, crowding out private charity, imposing one-size-fits-all mandates, and violating Tenth Amendment federalism. Taxpayers fund a properly state/local function with questionable constitutional authority.

This regulation establishes FEMA's consolidated grant program for insular areas (Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands), combining state and local management and maintenance funds into single annual grants with minimal administrative burden and no matching requirements.

Americans would be worse off if deleted because these territories lack state-level emergency management infrastructure and would be left without coordinated federal disaster response funding, creating significant vulnerability during natural disasters and emergencies where federal coordination is essential.

This regulation establishes FEMA's administrative procedures and cost-recovery mechanisms for processing flood map amendment and revision requests related to floodplain modifications, including various conditional and final letters for map amendments, revisions, and physical map revisions based on proposed or actual alterations to flood-prone areas.

This regulation creates a costly bureaucratic barrier to property development and land use, with fees that can exceed thousands of dollars for simple map changes. The extensive administrative process delays property owners' ability to use their land as they see fit, while the cost-recovery model essentially taxes citizens for FEMA's regulatory services. Private flood insurance and market-based solutions would better serve property owners without the federal government's heavy-handed intervention in local land use decisions.

Provides an administrative appeal process for property owners to challenge FEMA flood map designations when they believe their property was mistakenly included in flood zones due to technical mapping errors. Requires submission of scientific/technical evidence (plats, topographic maps, engineer certifications). FEMA reviews and may issue a Letter of Map Amendment to remove the property from the flood zone.

Deleting this would eliminate the low-cost administrative remedy for correcting government mapping errors, forcing property owners to either pay unnecessarily high flood insurance premiums or resort to expensive litigation. The regulation provides an accessible, expert-driven process that efficiently corrects technical mistakes, protecting property rights and ensuring fair application of flood insurance requirements.

Mandates FEMA consultation with local officials during flood elevation studies, including data requests, notifications, meetings, and recordkeeping to ensure community input and accurate flood mapping.

Deletion would eliminate required local input, reducing flood map accuracy and community trust, leading to inadequate risk assessment, flawed insurance premiums, and increased flood damages; the regulation systematically incorporates dispersed local knowledge essential for a government mapping program.

Establishes procedures for identifying flood, mudslide, and erosion hazards, and provides detailed requirements for revising flood insurance maps based on topographic changes, new data, or corrected errors. Includes certification requirements for professional engineers and surveyors.

Creates excessive bureaucratic complexity and cost burden on property owners and communities. The multi-step certification and revision process, with extensive engineering requirements and potential for FEMA denial, effectively prevents reasonable property use and development while imposing significant compliance costs without clear public benefit.

Regulation establishes FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program, including flood map creation, zone designation, community participation requirements, emergency provisions, and public access to maps.

Subsidized premiums distort market pricing, encouraging overdevelopment in flood zones and transferring risk to taxpayers. Federal mandates preempt local control, crowd out private insurers, and create moral hazard, leading to greater long-term losses and erosion of federalism.

This regulation governs the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), detailing how the Federal Insurance Administrator contracts with servicing agents and Write-Your-Own (WYO) insurance companies to sell flood insurance policies, process claims, handle cancellations/refunds, pay commissions, and administer appeals. It establishes the bureaucratic machinery for a federal flood insurance program that subsidizes and provides coverage in flood-prone areas.

The NFIP represents unconstitutional federal overreach into state-regulated insurance markets, creates massive moral hazard by subsidizing risky development in flood zones, and imposes enormous hidden costs on taxpayers ($20B+ in debt). It distorts natural market signals that would otherwise discourage building in high-risk areas, violates federalism principles (insurance is state domain under McCarran-Ferguson), and uses the Commerce Clause to justify activities not enumerated in the Constitution. The program's very existence encouragesreckless land-use decisions while socializing losses—a quintessential example of regulatory outrage where unseen costs dwarf any benefits. Private markets and state-level solutions can provide flood insurance without federal intervention, proper risk pricing, and taxpayer bailouts.

Federal flood insurance program establishing coverage for buildings and contents, with premium rates based on actuarial principles and special provisions for pre-FIRM vs post-FIRM structures, deductibles, and waiting periods.

This is a federal subsidy program that distorts free market risk pricing, creates moral hazard by encouraging development in flood-prone areas, and forces non-flood-prone property owners to subsidize flood-prone properties through artificially low rates.

Regulation establishes procedures for managing lands under Wild and Scenic Rivers Act and National Trails System Act, prioritizing preservation of free-flowing rivers and scenic trails while restricting motorized use and requiring closures/restrictions by authorized officers.

This regulation violates constitutional federalism by commandeering state and local land use authority under the Tenth Amendment. It imposes regulatory takings on private property owners without compensation, prohibits active forest management leading to catastrophic wildfires, and concentrates costs on rural communities while benefits accrue nationally. Voluntary conservation easements, state wild and scenic programs, and local zoning can achieve preservation goals without federal overreach. The one-size-fits-all approach creates perverse incentives and unintended consequences that outweigh its benefits.