“The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years,” President Trump provocatively tweeted yesterday, adding falsely that “they have given us nothing but lies & deceit.”
A breakdown of US aid to Pakistan (excluding covert assistance) was recently provided by the Congressional Research Service. See Direct Overt U.S. Aid Appropriations for and Military Reimbursements to Pakistan, FY2002-FY2018, November 28, 2017.
Other new and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service include the following.
Qatar: Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy, updated December 27, 2017
Tailoring Bank Regulations: Differences in Bank Size, Activities, and Capital Levels, December 21, 2017
Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC): Structure and Activities, December 22, 2017
The Federal Tax System for the 2017 Tax Year, December 26, 2017
Five-Year Program for Federal Offshore Oil and Gas Leasing: Status and Issues in Brief, updated December 20, 2017
Basic Concepts and Technical Considerations in Educational Assessment: A Primer, December 19, 2017
CRS Products on North Korea, December 28, 2017
January saw us watching whether the government would fund science. February has been about how that funding will be distributed, regulated, and contested.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.