Presidential Conflicts of Interest, and More from CRS
“Does federal law require the President to relinquish control of his or her business interests?” That question is considered in a new analysis from the Congressional Research Service.
The short answer appears to be No. “There is no current legal requirement that would compel the President to relinquish financial interests because of a conflict of interest.”
There are, however, certain legal disclosure requirements that apply to candidates for the Presidency. It is those requirements that are “the principal method of regulation of potential conflicts of interests for elected officials such as the President.”
See Conflicts of Interest and the Presidency, CRS Legal Sidebar, October 14, 2016,
Other new and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that have not been publicly released include the following.
The Help America Vote Act and Election Administration: Overview and Selected Issues for the 2016 Election, October 18, 2016
Federal Citations to the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases, October 19, 2016
Collateral Consequences: What Role, if any, Should They Play in Crafting Sentences?, CRS Legal Sidebar, October 19, 2016
Clean Water Act: A Summary of the Law, October 18, 2016
Ocean Dumping Act: A Summary of the Law, October 18, 2016
The High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail (HSIPR) Grant Program: Overview, October 18, 2016
Next Steps for Auction of TV Broadcast Airwaves to Commercial Carriers, CRS Insight, October 17, 2016
Current Vacancies on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims: Overview and Historical Context, CRS Insight, October 13, 2016
Iran’s State-Linked Conglomerates, CRS Insight, October 17, 2016
The Senkakus (Diaoyu/Diaoyutai) Dispute: U.S. Treaty Obligations, October 14, 2016
President Waives Restrictions on Relations with Burma’s Military under Child Soldier Prevention Act of 2008, CRS Insight, October 12, 2016
Elections Strengthen Georgia’s Ruling Party, CRS Insight, October 18, 2016
Recent Developments in U.S.-Russian Nonproliferation Cooperation, CRS Insight, October 13, 2016
A new web site provides a searchable collection of a large number of Congressional Research Service reports, modified to remove the names of the authors and their contact information. Aspirationally
Using the NIST as an example, the Radiation Physics Building (still without the funding to complete its renovation) is crucial to national security and the medical community. If it were to go down (or away), every medical device in the United States that uses radiation would be decertified within 6 months, creating a significant single point of failure that cannot be quickly mitigated.
The federal government can support more proactive, efficient, and cost-effective resiliency planning by certifying predictive models to validate and publicly indicate their quality.
We need a new agency that specializes in uncovering funding opportunities that were overlooked elsewhere. Judging from the history of scientific breakthroughs, the benefits could be quite substantial.
The cost of inaction is not merely economic; it is measured in preventable illness, deaths and diminished livelihoods.