This report discusses legislative initiatives regarding the alternative minimum tax (AMT) for individuals, which was originally enacted to ensure that all taxpayers, especially high-income taxpayers, paid at least a minimum amount of federal taxes.

The Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program, commonly referred to as Social Security, is facing a long-term fiscal deficit. In response to this challenge, President Bush has made Social Security reform the key focus of his domestic social policy agenda during his second term. On February 2, the President issued a document, “Strengthening Social Security for the 21st Century,” which lays out the specifications for a system of voluntary individual accounts to be phased-in as part of a reformed Social Security system. Administration officials concede that the individual accounts themselves do not alleviate the solvency problem. The individual account proposal would likely make the solvency problem worse over the next 75 years. The President has not yet specified how the additional shortfall due to the individual accounts will be financed. The President has stated that these accounts are just one piece of a comprehensive Social Security reform package and that additional measures will be needed to achieve long-term solvency. At the time of this report’s publication, the President has not specified what these additional measures might be.

This report, which will be updated regularly, examines issues in U.S.-Cuban relations and tracks legislative initiatives on Cuba in the 109th Congress. The 109th Congress will likely continue an active interest in Cuba concerning human rights, debate over economic sanctions (especially on travel), food and agricultural exports to Cuba, terrorism issues, Radio and TV Marti, bilateral anti-drug cooperation, and migration issues.

The Navy’s FY2006 budget proposes retiring the conventionally powered aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy (CV-67) in FY2006 and reducing the size of the carrier force from 12 ships to 11. The Kennedy is homeported in Mayport, FL. The proposal would not retire any other ships or any carrier air wings. Prior to this proposal, the Navy’s plan was to maintain a 12-carrier force and keep the Kennedy in operation until 2018. The issue for Congress is whether to approve, reject, or modify the proposal to retire the Kennedy and reduce the carrier force to 11 ships.

Some observers have proposed procuring Navy ships using incremental funding or advance appropriations rather than the traditional full funding approach that has been used to procure most Navy ships. Supporters believe these alternative funding approaches could increase stability in Navy shipbuilding plans and perhaps increase the number of Navy ships that could be built for a given total amount of ship procurement funding. The issue for the 109th Congress is whether to maintain or change current practices for funding Navy ship procurement. Congress’ decision could be significant because the full funding policy relates to Congress’ power of the purse and its responsibility for conducting oversight of defense programs.

All standing and select committees of the Senate (except for the Appropriations and Ethics Committees) obtain their operating budgets pursuant to a biennial committee funding resolution.

A congressional or federal charter is a federal statute that establishes a corporation. Congress has issued charters since 1791, although most charters were issued after the start of the 20th century. This report discusses the issues that recently, Congress has faced two issues involving its use of charters — confusion over who is responsible for the activities of chartered corporations and the challenges of managing them.

The U.S. Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastal states, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Island are exposed to relatively high levels of risk from hurricanes and tropical storms. The rapid expansion of the U.S. population into areas that are susceptible to hurricanes has placed millions of people and new areas of economic activity in harm’s way. To address the financial and economic effects of such risks, households and businesses have relied on private insurance, state-sponsored insurance pools, and/or federal emergency disaster assistance to manage their natural hazard risk.

Congressional policymakers are closely examining federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Overall, 15.6% of all public television and radio broadcasting funding comes from the federal appropriations that CPB distributes. The CPB’s appropriation is allocated through a distribution formula established in its authorizing legislation. It has historically received two-year advanced appropriations.

This report describes the Senate Rule XIV, para. 2, which requires that bills and resolutions have three readings before passage, and that they be read twice before being referred to committee.

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This report describes the flood of 1927, and assesses the federal government’s response thereto. In short, the federal response was an executive branch response. President Calvin Coolidge created a quasi-governmental commission that included members of his Cabinet and the American National Red Cross. This commission encouraged the public to donate funds to the relief effort. It also gave Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover near-absolute authority to organize and oversee its response. Hoover used this authority to weave together federal resources, American National Red Cross volunteers, and the private sector to carry out the relief and recovery program.

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This report evaluates that assertion, and considers other effects China’s peg has on the U.S. economy. These include the beneficial effects on consumption, interest rates, and investment spending. Nationwide, these effects should offset job loss in the trade sector, at least in the medium term. Several bills have been introduced in the 109th Congress to address China’s currency policy, including H.R. 1216, H.R. 1498, H.R. 1575, S. 14, S. 295, S. 377, and S. 593; some would impose trade sanctions against China unless it accepted a market-based system of currency valuation.

This report provides information on how most of the countries banned United States beef after a single report of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in a Canadian-born cow after the December 2003 U.S. report. This explains all the steps USDA has taken to reduce the positive cases of BSE by starting special programs. Updated May 25, 2005.

This report discusses the issue of U.S. economic assistance to sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting the importance of continued assistance in light of U.S. national security and also various U.S.-led efforts to promote reform amongst African citizens themselves. U.S. assistance finds its way to Africa through a variety of channels, including the USAID-administered DA program, food aid programs, and indirect aid provided through international financial institutions and the United Nations.

It has been proposed to add individual accounts to Social Security in which investors could hold private securities. Calculations that project the earnings of individual accounts typically presume that they will earn a rate of return equal or close to the historical rate of return. But is there evidence that future rates of return will differ from history in predictable ways?

Understanding and predicting the impact response of explosives and propellants remains a challenging area in the energetic materials field. Efforts are underway at LLNL (and other laboratories) to apply modern diagnostic tools and computational analysis to move beyond the current level of imprecise approximations towards a predictive approach more closely based on fundamental understanding of the relevant mechanisms. In this paper we will discuss a set of underlying mechanisms that govern the impact response of explosives and propellants: (a) mechanical insult (impact) leading to material damage and/or direct ignition; (b) ignition leading to flame spreading; (c) combustion being driven by flame spreading, perhaps in damaged materials; (d) combustion causing further material damage; (e) combustion leading to pressure build-up or relief; (f) pressure changes driving the rates of combustion and flame spread; (g) pressure buildup leading to structural response and damage, which causes many of the physical hazards. We will briefly discuss our approach to modeling up these mechanistic steps using ALE 3D, the LLNL hydrodynamic code with fully coupled chemistry, heat flow, mass transfer, and slow mechanical motion as well as hydrodynamic processes. We will identify the necessary material properties needed for our models, and will discuss our experimental efforts …

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