This report describes and analyzes the United States Fire Administration's (USFA's) FY2013 budget proposal, as well as related information and legislation.

This report provides an overview of four species of non-indigenous Asian carp that are expanding their range in U.S. waterways, resulting in a variety of concerns and problems. This report details the environmental and economic threats from this invasion, as well as ways to combat the spread of Asian carp in U.S. water.

This report discusses the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) Act, which was enacted by the 108th Congress as Section 1057 of the FY2004 National Defense Authorization Act (P.L. 108-136). It includes background of the SAFER Act, appropriations from FY2011-FY2013, reauthorization of the program in the House and Senate, and information about program implementation.

This report discusses the 2002 rule (the Clean Water Act), focusing on how it changes which material and types of activities are regulated under Section 404 and the significance of these issues, especially for the mining industry.

Report that describes the general nature of the biofuels RFS and its implementation, outlines some of the emerging issues related to the sustainability of the continued growth in U.S. biofuels production needed to fulfill the expanding RFS mandate, and the emergence of potential unintended consequences of this rapid expansion.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In fiscal year 2007, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) spent about $4.1 billion on long-term care for veterans. VA provides--through VA or other providers--institutional care in nursing homes and noninstitutional care in veterans' homes or the community. In response to a statute, VA published in 2007 a long-term care strategic plan through fiscal year 2013. VA includes long-term care spending estimates in its annual budget justifications for Congress. These estimates are based on workload projections--the amount of care to be provided--and cost assumptions. VA has discretion in allocating appropriated funds among its medical services, such as long-term care. GAO examined (1) VA's reporting of planned workload in its 2007 long-term care strategic plan and (2) VA's long-term care spending estimates, including its cost assumptions and workload projections, in VA's fiscal year 2009 budget justification. GAO analyzed budget and planning documents and interviewed VA officials."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Actual trust-fund revenues fell short of FAA’s revenue forecasts for 9 of the past 11 years, contributing to a decline in the trust fund’s uncommitted balance from over $7 billion in fiscal year 2000 to $770 million in fiscal year 2010. Inaccurate forecasts for the taxes related to domestic passenger tickets, which account for over 70 percent of trust-fund revenues, drove the aggregate overforecast, but inaccurate forecasts for other taxes also had an effect. This inaccuracy is largely attributable to unexpected events affecting aviation, such as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the recession in 2009; the budget process requiring the forecasts to be developed over a year in advance of the fiscal year; and lags in recognizing structural changes in the airline industry, such as airlines’ increased reliance on ancillary fees for which excise taxes for the trust fund are not collected. Changes in the methodology for forecasting trust-fund revenues and the assumption of forecasting responsibility by Treasury, begun in fiscal year 2011, may also affect the future accuracy of forecasts, but it is too soon to tell what effect the changes will …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Implementation of financial regulatory reform is ongoing. Although regulators have made progress in implementing some key reforms required by the Dodd- Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank Act), others remain incomplete. Moreover, the effectiveness of some implemented reforms, as illustrated below, remains to be seen."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Recognizing the importance of child support, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 requires that if a parent with child support obligations files for bankruptcy, a bankruptcy trustee must notify the relevant custodial parent and state child support enforcement agency so that they may participate in the case. The act also required GAO to study the feasibility of matching bankruptcy records with child support records to assure that filers with child support obligations are identified. GAO therefore (1) identified the percent of bankruptcy filers with obligations nationwide, (2) examined the potential for routine data matching to facilitate the identification of filers with child support obligations, and (3) studied the feasibility and cost of doing so. GAO interviewed child support enforcement and bankruptcy officials at the federal level and in six states. GAO also conducted a nationwide test data match and reviewed national bankruptcy filings for people with support obligations in Texas for an indication of whether filers are failing to provide this information."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "U.S. policymakers and industry groups are concerned that some foreign textile and apparel imports are entering the United States fraudulently and displacing U.S. textile and apparel industry workers. Congress mandated GAO to assess U.S. Customs and Border Protection's (CBP) system for monitoring and enforcing textile transshipment and make recommendations for improvements, as needed. Therefore, GAO reviewed (1) how CBP identifies potential illegal textile transshipment, (2) how well CBP's textile review process works to prevent illegal textile transshipment, and (3) how effectively CBP uses its in-bond system to monitor foreign textiles transiting the United States."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Recent data breaches highlight how identity theft may occur when businesses share individuals' personal information, including Social Security Numbers (SSNs), with contractors. Because private sector entities are more likely to share consumers' personal information via contractors, members of Congress raised concerns about the protection of this information in contractual relationships. In response, GAO examined (1) how entities within certain industries share SSNs with contractors; (2) the safeguards and notable industry standards in place to ensure the protection of SSNs when shared with contractors; and (3) how federal agencies regulate and monitor the sharing and safeguarding of SSNs between private entities and their contractors."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the General Services Administration (GSA), and selected agencies have taken steps to consider small businesses, including small disadvantaged businesses, in their strategic sourcing efforts. (Small disadvantaged businesses are those unconditionally owned and controlled by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.) OMB and GSA have developed guidance on strategic sourcing that stresses the importance of including small businesses. GAO's review of documentation for three ongoing government-wide strategic sourcing initiatives showed that GSA considered the inclusion of small businesses in the strategic sourcing process. For example, when developing strategic sourcing initiatives for office supplies and print management, GSA identified the current market share of small businesses with these products and also set aside specific contracts for various categories of small businesses, such as service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses. In addition, GAO's review of agency-wide strategic sourcing initiatives at each of five agencies--Departments of Defense (DOD), specifically Army and the Defense Logistics Agency; Homeland Security (DHS); Housing and Urban Development (HUD); and the Interior and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)--showed that the agencies generally considered the inclusion of small businesses."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced an increase to its immigration and naturalization application fees by an average of 86 percent, effective July 2007, contributing to a surge in application volume that challenged the agency's pre-adjudicative operations. In July 2007, the incoming application volume increased an unprecedented 100 percent over the prior month and the processing of 1.47 million applications was delayed. GAO was asked to review USCIS's current fee design and compare it to the principles in GAO's user-fee design guide and USCIS's management of operations affected by the new fees, specifically in projecting application volumes and contracting for application processing services. To do so, GAO reviewed legislation and agency documentation; compared the fee design to GAO's principles of effective user-fee design (equity, efficiency, revenue adequacy, and administrative burden); visited processing centers; and interviewed agency officials at these locations and in headquarters."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "While the Department of Defense (DOD) took steps to address previously identified weaknesses in updating and maintaining the Militarily Critical Technologies List (MCTL), the list remains outdated and updates have ceased. For example, DOD has solicited users' requirements and feedback on the MCTL, and added a search engine capability to improve navigation of the list and updated each technology section at least once. DOD also determined the list's purpose is to support export control decisions and in October 2008, issued an instruction that (1) recognized the list's usefulness for other DOD programs and activities and (2) outlined the roles, responsibilities, and procedures for updating and maintaining the list. However, in 2011, DOD cut funding for the program from $4 million in prior years to about $1.5 million and ceased MCTL content updates. Subsequently, DOD removed the public version of the list from the Internet, and officials posted a disclaimer for the restricted version noting that the list should only be used for informational purposes as it had not been updated. Similarly, the compendium of emerging technologies is outdated and two sections have not been updated since …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is responsible for granting or denying immigration benefits to individuals. USCIS charges fees for the millions of immigration applications it receives each year to fund the cost of processing and adjudicating them. In February 2007, USCIS completed a study to determine the full costs of its operations and the level at which application fees should be set to recover those costs. USCIS's new fee schedule increased application fees by a weighted average of 86 percent. Almost 96 percent of USCIS's fiscal year 2008 budget of $2.6 billion was expected to have come from fees. GAO was asked to review the methodology USCIS used in its fee review and controls in place over collection and use of fees. In this report, GAO addresses the consistency of the methodology with federal accounting standards and principles and other guidance, including whether key assumptions and methods were sufficiently justified and documented. The report also addresses internal controls USCIS has in place over the collection and use of fees."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Meeting the requirements of tax rules can be especially burdensome to small business sole proprietorships that independently own their businesses. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data show that, compared to other taxpayer groups, sole proprietorships have more problems complying with their tax obligations. Simplifying how sole proprietorships account for and report expenses may ease their burden and increase compliance. Because of the requesters' interest in alleviating any unnecessary burden that federal tax requirements impose on small businesses, we were asked to provide information on the expenses that sole proprietorships report on IRS's Form 1040 Schedule C--Profit or Loss from Business and on Form 1040 Schedule F--Profit or Loss from Farming. By having information on the expenses reported by sole proprietorships, policymakers may be in a better position to develop alternatives for simplifying how these taxpayers account for and report their expenses."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) pose a growing threat to U.S. national security interests as accurate, inexpensive delivery systems for conventional, chemical, and biological weapons. GAO assessed (1) the tools the U.S. and foreign governments use to address proliferation risks posed by the sale of these items and (2) efforts to verify the end use of exported cruise missiles, UAVs, and related technology."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Transportation's (DOT) Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has an opportunity to improve the ability of pipeline operators to respond to incidents by developing a performance-based approach for incident response times. The ability of transmission pipeline operators to respond to incidents--such as leaks and ruptures--is affected by numerous variables, some of which are under operators' control. For example, the use of different valve types (manual valves or "automated" valves that can be closed automatically or remotely) and the location of response personnel can affect the amount of time it takes for operators to respond to incidents. Variables outside of operators' control, such as weather conditions, can also influence incident response time, which can range from minutes to days. GAO has previously reported that a performance-based approach--including goals and associated performance measures and targets--can allow those being regulated to determine the most appropriate way to achieve desired outcomes. In addition, several organizations in the pipeline industry have developed methods for quantitatively evaluating response times to incidents, including setting specific, measurable performance goals. While defining performance measures and targets for incident response can be …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "According to one report, at the end of 2004, some 70 million U.S. adults logged on to access the Internet during a typical day. As public use of the Internet grew from the mid-1990s onward, Internet access became a potential target for state and local taxation. In 1998, Congress imposed a moratorium temporarily preventing state and local governments from imposing new taxes on Internet access. Existing state and local taxes were grandfathered. In amending the moratorium in 2004, Congress required GAO to study its impact on state and local government revenues. This report's objectives are to determine the scope of the moratorium and its impact, if any, on state and local revenues. For this report, GAO reviewed the moratorium's language, its legislative history, and associated legal issues; examined studies of revenue impact; interviewed people knowledgeable about access services; and collected information about eight case study states not intended to be representative of other states. GAO chose the states considering such factors as whether they had taxes grandfathered for different forms of access services and covered different urban and rural parts of the country."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "There is a growing understanding that the federal government needs to fundamentally rethink its current approach to pay and to better link pay to individual and organizational performance. Federal agencies have been experimenting with pay for performance through the Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) personnel demonstration projects. GAO identified the approaches that selected personnel demonstration projects have taken to implement their pay for performance systems. These projects include: the Navy Demonstration Project at China Lake (China Lake), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Department of Commerce (DOC), the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), the Naval Sea Systems Command Warfare Centers (NAVSEA) at Dahlgren and Newport, and the Civilian Acquisition Workforce Personnel Demonstration Project (AcqDemo). We selected these demonstration projects based on factors such as status of the project and makeup of employee groups covered. We provided drafts of this report to officials in the Department of Defense (DOD) and DOC for their review and comment. DOD provided written comments concurring with our report. DOC provided minor technical clarifications and updated information. We provided a draft of the report to the Director of OPM for …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has subsidized the development of over 23,000 properties by offering owners favorable long-term mortgage financing or rental assistance payments in exchange for owners' commitment to house low-income tenants. When owners pay off mortgages--the mortgages "mature"--the subsidized financing ends, raising the possibility of rent increases. GAO was asked to determine the number of HUD mortgages that are scheduled to mature in the next 10 years, the potential impact on tenants, and what HUD and others can do to keep these properties affordable."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Transportation (DOT) lacks sufficient and reliable data to fully identify its acquisition workforce needs and assess progress in addressing shortfalls over time. Over the last 3 years, the Office of the Senior Procurement Executive—the office within the Office of the Secretary of Transportation responsible for department-wide acquisition workforce management—has submitted acquisition workforce plans that reported progress in increasing the size of the workforce and the number of personnel certified to meet education, training, and experience requirements. However, GAO identified data limitations due to a lack of internal controls to maintain, compare, and reconcile the data compiled from DOT’s 11 operating administrations (OA), and determined that the department-level data were not sufficient to assess progress over time. For example, DOT did not maintain the data it used to prepare the 2010 and 2011 plans and in some cases the data were also not available from the OAs. By contrast, GAO obtained the data DOT used to prepare the 2012 plan, compared it with data from the OAs, and interviewed OA officials about the sources and methods they used to report the data. GAO found …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The five federal agencies GAO reviewed--the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Departments of Energy (DOE), Homeland Security (DHS), the Interior, and Veterans' Affairs (VA)--reported fiscal year 2012 deferred maintenance and repair backlog estimates that ranged from nearly $1 billion to $20 billion. In accordance with Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) standards, agencies report backlog estimates in required supplementary information accompanying their financial statements in their annual financial reports. In addition, data reported by agencies and included in the Federal Real Property Profile (FRPP)--a database overseen by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in coordination with agencies comprising the Federal Real Property Council (FRPC)--provides information that can be used to estimate an agency's backlog. FASAB and FRPP guidelines do not share a common definition of deferred maintenance, and an agency can make different determinations when reporting information in its financial reports and to FRPP, resulting in dissimilar backlog estimates. In addition, agencies use different methods to determine and report backlogs, making estimates across agencies not comparable. For example, Interior excludes, while DHS includes, costs for some assets scheduled for disposal. In 2011 and 2012, …

This report discusses environmental services markets in relation to the farm bill (P.L. 110-234, the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008), which covers a range of farm and forestry sector services associated with improved water and air quality, increased carbon storage, and habitat protection. It gives an overview of environmental services markets as well as benefits and barriers, how they are affected by Congressional action, and possible considerations.