This is all valid and good advise, but there's another option, too, which should not be overlooked. That is to cut scope creep off at the pass.

And when that scope creep comes from a federal bureaucracy regulation which requires you to do whatever a career bureaucrat with full power and no responsibility decides? And that decision changes without warning (and even notice) at rapid and irregular intervals?

Don't get me wrong, I agree with what you say, but when the first step of a process is random ravings of a bureaucratic mind, it's brown trouser time.