This report focuses on the potential implications of China's naval modernization for future required U.S. Navy capabilities. The report discusses the question of how the United States should respond to China's military modernization effort, including its naval modernization effort, has emerged as a key issue in U.S. defense planning.

This report discusses issues Congress faces regarding the Navy's proposed FY2011 budget, particularly as relating to destroyer procurement plans and programs.

This report presents information on federal programs targeted to unemployed workers specifically, but does not attempt to discuss means-tested programs (such as Medicaid or SSI) that are available regardless of employment status.

This report collects statistics from a variety of sources on casualties sustained during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), which began on October 7, 2001. OEF actions took place primarily in Afghanistan; however, OEF casualties also includes American casualties in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Guantanamo Bay (Cuba), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Yemen.

Among the options likely to be considered to deal with the long-term fiscal problem is reform of the federal tax system. The growth of the alternative minimum tax (AMT) and the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts in 2010 will likely force some action on tax policy. The perception that the federal tax system is too complex and unfair could lead to public support for tax reform. Past efforts to reform the federal tax system have included policies to rein in the use and expense of tax expenditures--the special deductions, exclusions, exemptions, and credits resulting in revenue losses. This report examines tax expenditures within the context of the federal budget and discusses tax expenditure analysis.

This report provides background information and analysis of the U.S.-EU economic relationship for Members of the 111th Congress as they contemplate the costs and benefits of closer U.S. economic ties with the EU. It examines the economic and political framework of the relationship and the scope and magnitude of the ties based on data from various sources. In addition, the report analyzes the implications these factors have for U.S. economic policy toward the EU. The report will be revised as events warrant.

This report defines the potential duties and responsibilities of a systemic risk regulator, relating those duties to events that potentially contributed to the recent crisis. It then identifies the powers that would need to be given to a regulator to perform those duties, and compares those powers and responsibilities to the Fed's existing powers and responsibilities. It discusses advantages and disadvantages of giving those responsibilities to the Fed or the executive branch. It also includes a brief overview of major elements of the Administration's proposal, H.R. 4173, which passed the House on December 11, 2009, and S. 3217, which passed the Senate on May 20, 2010,2 that involve the Fed.

This report focuses on the potential implications of China's naval modernization for future required U.S. Navy capabilities. The report discusses the question of how the United States should respond to China's military modernization effort, including its naval modernization effort, has emerged as a key issue in U.S. defense planning.

This report covers the question of how the United States should respond to China's military modernization effort, including its naval modernization effort, has emerged as a key issue in U.S. defense planning. The question is of particular importance to the U.S. Navy, because many U.S. military programs for countering improved Chinese military forces would fall within the Navy's budget. Potential oversight issues for Congress include the following: whether the U.S. Navy in coming years will be large enough to adequately counter improved Chinese maritime anti-access forces while also adequately performing other missions of interest to U.S. policymakers around the world; the Navy's ability to counter Chinese ASBMs and submarines; and whether the Navy, in response to China's maritime anti-access capabilities, should shift over time to a more distributed fleet architecture.

This report examines the methods and formulas used to reapportion seats in the House of Representatives following a Census. Although modern Congresses have rarely considered the issue of the formula used in the calculations, this report describes apportionment options from which Congress could choose and the criteria that each method satisfies.

This report discusses the Aegis ballistic missile defense (BMD) program. Under current Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and Navy plans, the number of BMD-capable Navy Aegis ships is schedule to grow from 20 at the end of FY2010 to 38 at the end of FY2015. This report discusses the concerns some have over BMD expansion, as well as BMD funding issues.

This report provides a brief summary of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act of 2009 (the CFPA Act or the Act) and delineates some of the substantive differences between it and H.R. 4173, Title IV, as it passed the House, and S. 3217, Title X, as it passed the Senate. It then analyzes some of the policy implications of the proposal, focusing on the separation of safety and soundness regulation from consumer protection, financial innovation, and the scope of regulation. The report then raises some questions regarding state law preemption, sources of funding, and rulemaking procedures that the Act does not fully answer.

This report the international saga of Andrew Speaker, a traveler thought to have XDR-TB, a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis, placed a spotlight on existing mechanisms to contain contagious disease threats and raised numerous legal and public health issues. It also discusses the application of various public health measures available to contain an emerging public health threat posed by an individual who ignores medical advice and attempts to board an airplane or take other forms of public transportation.

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We propose a class of AdS/CFT dual pairs which have small internal dimensions on the gravity side. Starting from known Freund-Rubin AdS/CFT dual pairs, we use 7-branes to nearly cancel the curvature energy of the internal dimensions while maintaining their stabilization. This leads to a new corner of the landscape - a class of AdS solutions with a hierarchically large AdS radius - with a dual field theory given (implicitly) by the infrared limit of a concrete brane construction involving D3-branes, 7-branes, and curvature. We first construct a class of hierarchical AdS5/CFT4 dual pairs with a simple formula for the number of degrees of freedom which we interpret in the dual QFT. We then generalize these to AdS4/CFT3 duals, and suggest extensions of the method to obtain de Sitter solutions.

This report discusses the controversial issue of local or regional procurement (LRP) as an alternative to commodity donations as methods of international food aid. Experiences with LRP, such as the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), are evaluated in discussion with current LRP initiatives of the United States.