A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Defense Department (DOD) encourages the reuse of excess property, including vehicles, weapons, hand tools, lumber, medical equipment, and furniture. DOD components, civilian federal agencies, and "special programs" have equal priority and first rights to excess property. This report discusses excess property issued to three of 12 special programs--the Military Affiliate Radio System, the Civil Air Patrol, and the 12th Congressional Regional Equipment Center. Between 1995 and 2000, these programs obtained $34 million worth of items that they were not eligible to receive. The three programs were able to obtain the items because the DOD facilities that store the property are not required to verify which items the programs are eligible to receive, and because program officials do not consistently follow applicable guidelines. GAO also noted that the programs' lists of property they are allowed to obtain are not comprehensive because the lists exclude mission-related items similar to those already permitted. Furthermore, these programs did not have reliable records for more than three-quarters of their excess property. Together, the three special programs obtained more than 80,000 hazardous supplies. In many cases, program officials were unaware that …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "U.S. military aircraft are often at great risk from enemy air defenses, and the services use specialized aircraft to neutralize or destroy them. In January 2001, GAO reported that a gap existed between the services' suppression capabilities and their needs and recommended that a comprehensive strategy was needed to fix the situation. In response to GAO's report, DOD emphasized that a major study underway at the time would provide the basis for a Department-wide strategy and lead to a balanced set of acquisition programs between the services. This report updates our previous work and assesses actions that DOD has taken to improve its suppression capabilities."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "About 7,000 Peace Corps volunteers now serve in 70 countries, often living in areas with limited access to reliable communications, police, or medical services. Moreover, as Americans, they may be viewed as relatively wealthy and hence good targets for criminal activity. The Peace Corps has reported rising numbers of assaults against its volunteers since it began collecting data in 1990. However, the Peace Corps' record is mixed when it comes to developing safe and secure housing and worksites for volunteers, monitoring volunteers and responding to security concerns or criminal incidents, and preparing for emergencies. To reduce risks to its volunteers, the Peace Corps has adopted policies that address monitoring and disseminating information on the security environment; volunteer training; development of safe and secure housing and work sites for volunteers; monitoring volunteers and responding to incidents and concerns; and planning for emergencies, such as evacuations. Volunteer surveys and GAO visits to five overseas ports indicate that volunteers are generally satisfied with agency training programs and other efforts designed to emphasize safety and security awareness. The agency is not certain, but officials have stated that efforts to improve …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "U.S. officials are interested in transferring some government social welfare functions to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). One area is in the delivery of foreign assistance to developing countries and countries transitioning from communism to market-oriented democracy. Many NGOs active in international development have years of experience working overseas and have received millions of dollars in funds from private sources as well as the U.S. government. USAID directed $4 billion of its $7.2 billion assistance funding to NGOs in fiscal year 2000. However, the amount of funding provided by specific types of assistance is unknown, because USAID lacks comprehensive and reliable data. USAID uses various types of contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements to provide assistance through NGOs. This range of funding mechanisms allows USAID flexibility to draw on the strengths and expertise of a large community of experienced NGOs. The different mechanisms have advantages and disadvantages in terms of cost, time, selection of potential implementers, and USAID's authority to oversee assistance activities. Compared with USAID, official donors provide more of their funding to foreign governments and private donors and spend more of their funding on unsolicited proposals. USAID …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Army wants an artillery system with greater firepower, range, and mobility than its current self-propelled howitzer. In 1994, the Army began to develop the Crusader, an advanced artillery system consisting of a self-propelled 155-millimeter howitzer and a resupply vehicle. The Department of Defense (DOD) will decide next year whether the Crusader program should enter its system development and demonstration stage, which will require the commitment of major resources. GAO found that the Crusader program has made considerable progress in developing key technologies and reducing its size and weight. However, more progress and knowledge is needed to minimize the risk of cost overruns, schedule delays, and performance shortfalls. The Crusader program will likely enter product development with most of its critical technologies less mature than best practices recommend. Most of the Crusader's critical technologies have been demonstrated in a relevant environment but not in the more demanding operational environment. Although the Army is reducing the Crusader's weight so that two vehicles can be deployed on a C-17 aircraft, the deployability advantage gained does not appear significant. The reduction in the Crusader system's weight would only decrease …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Because of the recent growth in DOD's Selective Reenlistment Bonus Program, the House Appropriations Committee asked GAO to determine (1) the extent to which the services have followed their criteria for managing their programs and (2) whether DOD has provided adequate guidance for and oversight of the program."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. payment system is a large and complex system of people, institutions, rules, and technologies that transfer monetary value and related information. The nation's payment system transfers an estimated $3 trillion dollars each day--nearly one third of the U.S. gross domestic product. Currently, settlement--the final step in the transfer of ownership involving the physical exchange of payment or securities--occurs only during the business week. Some retailers, however, generate approximately half their weekly sales on weekends--when depository and other financial institutions generally are closed--receiving cash, checks, and electronic payments that are not credited to their accounts until at least the next business day. Weekend settlement of financial transactions would provide small benefits to retailers and consumers, and little, if any, benefit to the economy as a whole. Because payment system actors and processes are interdependent, implementing weekend settlement would require payment service providers that clear and settle retail and wholesale payments to open on weekends, resulting in significantly increased operational costs. Although there are no direct federal prohibitions against weekend settlement, state laws that are not preempted by federal laws or regulations providing for weekend settlement …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The $24 billion Military Health System provided health care to over 8 million eligible beneficiaries. Although Congress has provided sizeable increases in funding for health care over the past few years, the Department of Defense (DOD) has needed supplemental appropriations for 6 of the last 8 fiscal years from 1994 to 2001 because its costs were higher than expected. The growing budgetary pressure increases the risk of not achieving the mission of the organization. DOD's military treatment facilities (MTF) represent over half of DOD's health care expenditures. The three MTF's reviewed have not effectively implemented internal control activities in the areas of eligibility, billings and collections, expired drugs, personal property management, and government purchase card usage. The three MTFs also did not identify all patients with third party insurance coverage. In addition, they frequently did not bill those insurers even when they knew that such coverage existed, thereby losing opportunities to collect millions of dollars of reimbursements for services. Ineffective physical and financial controls over personal property assets and indications of control breakdowns in the use of government purchase cards existed at the three facilities."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease, has been found in cattle in 23 countries. Countries with BSE have suffered large economic losses because of declines in both beef exports and domestic beef sales. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have primary responsibility for preventing the introduction of BSE-contaminated cattle, beef, and cattle-derived products into the United States. GAO found that FDA has not acted promptly to force firms to keep prohibited proteins out of cattle feed and to label animal feed that cannot be fed to cattle. FDA's data on inspections are severely flawed, and FDA is unaware of the full extent of industry compliance. If BSE was discovered in U.S. cattle, many consumers might refuse to buy domestic beef; beef exports could decline dramatically as could sales in related industries, such as hamburger chains and frozen dinner manufacturers. Furthermore, some people might develop mad cow disease if infected cattle were to enter the food supply. The United States acted as many as five years earlier than did other countries to impose controls over imports …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Defense Department (DOD), the Coast Guard, and the Customs Service all interdict illegal drugs--primarily cocaine--from South America. DOD is the lead agency, but all three agencies play a role in monitoring and detecting shipments of illegal drugs. The Coast Guard is the lead agency for apprehending ships that are smuggling drugs, with Customs providing help as needed. The Coast Guard and Customs share responsibility for apprehending aircraft involved in drug-smuggling. GAO could not identify the funds obligated and the number of flight hours and ship days used for drug interdiction in the drug transit zone because the three agencies do not routinely track this information. The results tracked by the three agencies to demonstrate their effectiveness of their drug interdiction efforts in the transit zone varied according to whether they focused on drug seizures or results of detection and monitoring and whether they were specific to the transit zone. Agencies can use several controls to ensure the accuracy of their own cocaine seizure data, such as assigning unique identification numbers to each seizure and headquarters review of data from field units. Although two interagency data …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Each school day, millions of children receive meals and snacks provided through the National School Lunch and National School Breakfast Programs. Any child at a participating school may purchase a meal through these school meal programs, and children from households that apply and meet established income guidelines can receive these meals free or at a reduced price. The federal government reimburses the states, which in turn reimburse school food authorities for each meal served. During fiscal year 2001, the federal government spent $8 billion in reimbursements for school meals. The Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service, state agencies, and school food authorities all play a role in these school meal programs. GAO reported that costs for the application, verification, and meal counting and reimbursement processes for the school meal programs were incurred mainly at the local level. Estimated federal and state-level costs during school year 2000-2001 for these three processes were generally much less than 1 cent per program dollar administered. At the local level--selected schools and the related school food authorities--the median estimated cost for these processes was 8 cents per program dollar and …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In response to concerns that individuals wanted in connection with a felony or violating terms of their parole or probation could receive benefits from programs for the needy, Congress added provisions to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 that prohibit these individuals from receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Food Stamp benefits, and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) and make fugitive felon status ground for the termination of tenancy in federal housing assistance programs. In addition, the act directs these programs to provide law enforcement officers with information about program recipients for whom there are outstanding warrants to assist in their apprehension. Actions taken to implement the act's fugitive felon provisions have varied substantially by program. In implementing provisions to prohibit benefits to fugitive felons, all but housing assistance programs include, at a minimum, a question about fugitive felon status in their applications. SSI and some state Food Stamp and TANF programs also seek independent verification of fugitive felon status by using computer matching to compare arrest warrant and program recipient files. To date, 110,000 beneficiaries have been identified as fugitive felons …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Technical Assistance is an important means through which the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) can influence how its program funds are spent; this assistance can range from training workshops to one-on-one assistance. GAO was asked to determine how many HUD technical assistance programs Congress has authorized and their cost; why HUD offers technical assistance programs and who provides and receives the services; and whether HUD program offices are overseeing and measuring the impact of their technical assistance programs as required."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In fiscal year 2001, the federal government spent $7 billion on the following three special education grant programs: Special Education Grants to States (School-age Grants), Special Education Grants Preschool (Preschool Grants) and Special Education Grants for Infants and Families with Disabilities (Infants Grants). School-age and Preschool Grants are similar, except for the age ranges served, while Infant Grants differ in goals, performance objectives, performance measures, eligibility, and services. The key distinction between School-Age and Preschool Grants is that School-age Grants serve children ages three through 21, whereas Preschool Grants serve only children ages three through five. States receive funds from all three grants, and some states report they use both School-age and Preschool funds to provide the same range of services to children aged three through five. Although states receive funds from all three grants, local agencies may receive funds from only one grant, or from all three. Eighteen of the 19 states GAO reviewed reported that the range of services they provide to children ages three through five is the same as those they provide with Preschool Grants. Evaluations show that half the children who …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The earned income credit (EIC) is a refundable tax credit available to low-income, working taxpayers. Administering the EIC is not an easy task for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). IRS has to balance its efforts to help ensure that all qualified persons claim the credit with its efforts to protect the integrity of the tax system and guard against fraud and other forms of noncompliance associated with EIC. Although IRS made some changes to its correspondence, improved its examiner training, and expanded taxpayer outreach, certain aspects of the recertification process continue to cause problems for taxpayers. Since the inception of the EIC Recertification Program in 1998, IRS has taken steps to improve some of the letters and forms it uses to correspond with taxpayers about the program. However, two standard forms that IRS uses in corresponding with taxpayers as part of the recertification process can lead to unnecessary taxpayer burden. IRS asks taxpayers to submit certain information as part of the process that can be difficult for some EIC claimants to obtain or is inconsistent with what many examiners consider acceptable."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Multilateral export control regimes are consensus-based, voluntary arrangements of supplier countries that produce technologies useful in developing weapons of mass destruction or conventional weapons. The regimes aim to restrict trade in these technologies to keep them from proliferating states or terrorists. The United States seeks to improve the effectiveness of these regimes. GAO was asked to (1) assess weaknesses of the four regimes and (2) identify obstacles faced in trying to strengthen them."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The six states reviewed had in place a variety of protections, established prior to the economic downturn, to assist unemployed individuals in maintaining health insurance coverage: State-mandated continuation coverage, which required small businesses to extend their group health coverage to former employees and their families who choose to pay for it. Guaranteed conversion, which required insurers to allow eligible individuals to convert their group coverage to individual health insurance policies. Guaranteed issue, which required insurers to offer coverage to those who did not have access to group coverage or public insurance. High-risk pools, state-created associations that offered comprehensive health insurance benefits to individuals with acute or chronic health conditions. However, individuals usually bore the full cost of the premiums, which was usually higher than their premium cost under employer-sponsored plans. For individuals who relied on unemployment benefits as their principal income, premiums absorbed a significant share of the benefit."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) seeks to prevent business practices that are anticompetitive, deceptive, or unfair to consumers. If FTC determines that a merger may harm competition in the marketplace, the agency may decide to block the merger or select a remedy that addresses the anticompetitive problems it has identified. FTC's preferred remedy is divestiture--the selling of a business or assets by one or both of the merging parties to maintain or restore competition where it might be harmed by the merger. When divestiture is chosen as a remedy, FTC usually drafts a proposed agreement with the merging parties that contains an order requiring the divestiture needed to remedy the anticompetitive problems. If all parties agree, FTC issues a proposed order which is made available to the public for comment for 30 days and, in most cases, authorizes the parties to consummate the merger. According to FTC staff, FTC decisions to use particular divestiture approaches are (1) based on the unique facts of each case and do not readily translate into written guidelines or systematic aggregation and (2) tied to proprietary company information that FTC is …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The central banks of major industrialized countries have agreed on common policy objectives and presented them in the Core Principles for Systematically Important Payment Systems. Intended to help promote safer and more efficient payment systems worldwide, the Core Principles outline specific policy recommendations for systematically important payment systems and describe the responsibilities of the central banks. All of the central banks GAO studied seek to ensure that their wholesale payment systems operate smoothly and minimize systemic risk. All of the central banks provide settlement services for their countries' wholesale payment systems. Some central banks also provide wholesale clearing services. Other central banks own the system but have little operational involvement in clearing, while others participate in partnerships with the private sector. All of the central banks GAO studied provide settlement for some retail payment systems. Some, but not all, central banks exercise regulatory authority over retail payment systems in their countries. Central banks also tend to have less operational involvement in countries where there is a relatively concentrated banking industry. In some cases, laws governing payments and the structure of the financial services industry direct the …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In a 1996 report, GAO made a number of recommendations to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for reducing spending and improving the operations of the Federal Reserve System (Federal Reserve). The Federal Reserve has taken actions responsive to most of the 1996 report's recommendations. The Federal Reserve has retained its structure but has sought to consolidate operations and bring common management practices to the 12 Federal Reserve District Banks. In particular, the Federal Reserve now manages the payment services it provides to banks on a systemwide basis. The Federal Reserve has also changed its budgeting, internal oversight, and cost accounting processes in an effort to increase accountability. It has taken other steps to decrease costs in areas identified by the 1996 report. Specifically, the Reserve Banks have consolidated their purchase of some services, such as prescription drug coverage, to take advantage of volume discounts, rather than continuing with the former practice of each individual Reserve Bank purchasing services separately. The Federal Reserve, however, continues not charging for bank examinations. Federal Reserve officials explained that they continue to believe that charging for bank …

Quarterly publication of the Texas Comptroller's Office regarding sales and use tax in the state of Texas, including an analysis by county, analysis by industry, and related notes.

Activities for this first quarter include continued effort in simulating the experiments performed in the NASA 7-ft x 10-ft wind tunnel with the GTS geometry using both LLNL's advanced computational tools and NASA's Overflow code. Along with this analysis effort, we continue to implement advanced algorithms in LLNL's models to improve simulation speed and accuracy and to verify and validate these advanced simulation tools.

This report highlights six of the most popular programs among a number of programs in Washington D.C., explain the workings of the national government to a diverse range of Americans, from middle school to senior citizens.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) owns, operates, and manages the buildings and land areas on the Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. As land and buildings are declared excess or underutilized, it is the intent of DOE to either transfer the title of or lease suitable property to the Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee (CROET) or other entities for public use. It is DOE's responsibility, in coordination with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Region 4, and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC), to ensure that the land, facilities, and personal property that are to have the title transferred or are to be leased are suitable for public use. Release of personal property must also meet site requirements and be approved by the DOE contractor responsible for site radiological control. The terms title transfer and lease in this document have unique meanings. Title transfer will result in release of ownership without any restriction or further control by DOE. Under lease conditions, the government retains ownership of the property along with the responsibility to oversee property utilization. This includes involvement in the lessee's health, safety, and radiological control plans and conduct of site inspections. It …