Reception of Refugees in the US, & More from CRS
As of May 31, more than 46,000 refugees from around the world were received in the United States in FY 2017 and were settled in every state except for Wyoming, a new report from the Congressional Research Service found.
Though that is a small number compared with the hundreds of thousands of refugees accepted annually in Germany and some other Western countries, it is roughly consistent with the number of refugees accepted by the US in the last several years, according to data compiled by CRS. See Reception and Placement of Refugees in the United States, June 21, 2017.
Other new and updated publications from the Congressional Research Service include the following.
Paris Agreement: U.S. Climate Finance Commitments, June 19, 2017
Political Status of Puerto Rico: Brief Background and Recent Developments for Congress, updated June 12, 2017
India-U.S. Relations: Issues for Congress, June 19, 2017
Arms Sales: Congressional Review Process, updated June 22, 2017
When Is Running Guns From the Philippines to Mexico a Federal Crime?, CRS Legal Sidebar, June 26, 2017
The Budget Control Act: Frequently Asked Questions, June 22, 2017
Freshwater Harmful Algal Blooms: Causes, Challenges, and Policy Considerations, June 20, 2017
Global Research and Development Expenditures: Fact Sheet, updated June 16, 2017
Violence Against Members of Congress and Their Staff: A Brief Overview, CRS Insight, June 15, 2017
In new legislative report language, the House Appropriations Committee endorsed public access to all non-confidential CRS reports. Subject to approval or amendment by the Committee today, CRS was tentatively told to develop recommendations for implementing such access within 90 days.
“The Committee directs the Library of Congress’s Congressional Research Service (CRS) to make available to the public, all non-confidential reports. The Committee has debated this issue for several years, and after considering debate and testimony from entities inside the legislative branch and beyond the Committee believes the publishing of CRS reports will not impede CRS’s core mission in any impactful way and is in keeping with the Committee’s priority of full transparency to the American people,” the draft Committee report said. (Wash Post, June 28).
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.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.