Recent reports of interest from the Congressional Research Service include the following (all pdf):
U.S. Arms Sales to Pakistan, November 8, 2007.
Nuclear Weapons: The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program, updated November 8, 2007.
Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia: Political Developments and Implications for U.S. Interests, updated November 7, 2007.
China and Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Missiles: Policy Issues, updated October 22, 2007.
The Iran Sanctions Act (ISA), updated October 12, 2007.
NATO in Afghanistan: A Test of the Transatlantic Alliance, updated October 23, 2007.
China’s Economic Conditions, updated October 11, 2007.
Ukraine: Current Issues and U.S. Policy, updated October 10, 2007.
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.