New publications from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following.
U.S. Sanctions on Russia in Response to Events in Ukraine, July 18, 2014
Use of Force Considerations in Iraq, July 15, 2014
The Kurds and Possible Iraqi Kurdish Independence, July 15, 2014
Unaccompanied Alien Children: A Processing Flow Chart, July 16, 2014
District of Columbia: Marijuana Decriminalization and Enforcement; Issues of Home Rule and Congressional Oversight, July 17, 2014
Improving Health Care Access for Veterans: H.R. 3230, July 16, 2014
FY2015 National Defense Authorization Act: Selected Military Personnel Issues, July 16, 2014
“Black Boxes” in Passenger Vehicles: Policy Issues, July 21, 2014
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.