This report provides information on congressional practices with respect to the duration of continuing resolutions, including the use of full-year measures, and focuses particularly on the period covering FY1998-FY2010.

This report discusses the United States' Department of Defense's (DOD) Japan 2011 Earthquake relief efforts, designated "Operation Tomodachi," which is Japanese for "friend." The report includes an overview of the situation, funding for DOD efforts, naval activities, air activities, and a historical overview of U.S. military presence in Japan.

This report discusses background and funding for the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program (previously known as the High-Performance Computing and Communications program, or HPPCC), which involves multiagency research and development (R&D) projects. It includes information about the program, background on federal technology funding, related activities in the 112th and 111th Congresses, and potential issues for Congress to address.

This report discusses the "DREAM Act", a measure to enable certain unauthorized alien students to legalize their status, as well as related issues.

This report provides information on U.S. Africa Command or (AFRICOM), including AFRICOM's mission, structure, interagency coordination, and its basing and manpower requirements. The report also gives a broad overview of U.S. strategic interests in Africa and the role of U.S. military efforts on the continent as they pertain to the creation of Africa Command.

This report provides an overview and analysis of U.S.-Yemeni relations, including issues such as: political change in Yemeni leadership; ongoing U.S. counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) operatives at large in Yemen's hinterlands; and international efforts to bolster the country's stability despite an array of daunting socio-economic problems. Congress and U.S. policymakers may be concerned with prospects for stabilizing Yemen and establishing strong bilateral relations with future Yemeni leaders.

This report describes federal programs that provide grants, loans, loan guarantees, and other direct or indirect regulatory incentives for energy efficiency, energy conservation, and renewable energy. For each program, the report provides the administering agency, authorizing statute(s), annual funding, and the program expiration date. The appendixes provide summary information in a tabular format.

This report summarizes issues, arguments, and concerns relevant to a value-added tax (VAT).

This report examines the nascent battery manufacturing industry and considers efforts to strengthen U.S. capacity to manufacture batteries and battery components for hybrid and electric vehicles. It addresses the concern about an electric vehicle supply chain in the United States since manufacturers have brought hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and fully-electric vehicles to market.

This report examines how conflicts of interest may arise regarding derivatives clearing and analyzes the measures that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed to address them. It discusses what effect, if any, ownership and control limits may have on derivatives clearing; and whether such limits effectively address the types of conflicts of interest that are of concern to some in the 112th Congress. These rulemakings may interest the 112th Congress as part of its oversight authority for the CFTC and SEC. Trends in clearing and trading derivatives, and the ownership of swap clearinghouses, are discussed in the Appendix.

This report discusses the Supreme Court's decision in Snyder vs. Phelps, which deals with the question of Westboro Baptist Church's tort liability, a church that has protested military funerals for a number of years. It analyzes the constitutional issues facing federal laws that create funeral protest buffer zones and examines legislative options for amending the federal laws restricting funeral protests, including H.R. 961.

This report examines the impact on the federal budget of the President’s proposals, specifically the proposed freeze in non-security discretionary spending and how the freeze might change the fiscal outlook over the 10-year budget window.

This report discusses the levying of a value-added tax (VAT), a broad-based consumption tax, to potentially assist in resolving United States fiscal problems. It considers the experiences of the 29 nations with value-added taxes (VATs) in the 30-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which are relevant to the feasibility and operation of a possible U.S. VAT.

This report provides the historical development and options for change on the franking privilege.

This report discusses alien eligibility for the provisions in PPACA that have restrictions based on immigration status: participation in high-risk pools, the requirement to maintain health insurance, the ability to purchase insurance through an exchange, and eligibility for premium credits and cost-sharing subsidies. The report concludes with an analysis of data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) that illuminate some of the possible effects of PPACA on the health insurance coverage of the noncitizen population.

None