Newly updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that have not been made readily available to the public include the following.
Argentina’s Defaulted Sovereign Debt: Dealing with the “Holdouts”, February 6, 2013
Honduras-U.S. Relations, February 5, 2013
Veterans and Homelessness, February 4, 2013
VA Housing: Guaranteed Loans, Direct Loans, and Specially Adapted Housing Grants, February 4, 2013
Agricultural Conservation: A Guide to Programs, February 5, 2013
The National Flood Insurance Program: Status and Remaining Issues for Congress, February 6, 2013
Appropriations Subcommittee Structure: History of Changes from 1920 to 2013, February 5, 2013
U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF): Background and Issues for Congress, February 6, 2013
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.