Negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) were completed December 11, 1997, committing the industrialized nations to specified, legally binding reductions in emissions of six "greenhouse gases." This report discusses the major provisions of the Kyoto Protocol.

This report discusses the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA), programs which are continuing to operate on the basis of limited interim financing enacted in the closing moments of the 1st Session.

Over the past decade, worldwide production of illicit drugs has risen dramatically: opium and marijuana production has roughly doubled and coca production tripled. Street prices of cocaine and heroin have fallen significantly in the past 20 years, reflecting increased availability. Despite apparent national political resolve to deal with the drug problem, inherent contradictions regularly appear between U.S. anti-drug policy and other national policy goals and concerns. The mix of competing domestic and international pressures and priorities has produced an ongoing series of disputes within and between the legislative and executive branches concerning U.S. international drug policy. One contentious issue has been the Congressionally-mandated certification process, an instrument designed to induce specified drug-exporting countries to prioritize or pay more attention to the fight against narcotics businesses.

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This report will provide a brief explanation of how the review scheme was expected to operate and describe how it has in fact been utilized. The possible reasons for the limited use of the formal review mechanism thus far are assessed and congressional remedial proposals and other options are discussed.

This document describes the aid of 3.1 billion President Clinton has requested for FEMA. Past funds were brought up throughout the year and shows how this number is low for the needs of FEMA. The document lists needs and what all FEMA helps along with assistance under the Stafford Act.

Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, P.L. 103-62, also called the “Results Act,” and GPRA. A government-wide performance plan was submitted with the President’s FY1999 budget. Congressional hearings have been held on implementation of GPRA, and the General Accounting Office and congressional groups have assessed initial activities. Most strategic plans have been criticized for not conveying required analyses of the linkage between strategic goals and annual goals and measures, of resources needed to achieve goals, of data systems capabilities, and of interagency coordination on similar programs.

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The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA, P.L. 93-406) places the regulation of employee benefit plans (including health plans) primarily under federal jurisdiction for about 124 million people. ERISA’s treatment of health plans is both complicated and confusing. ERISA has been interpreted as dividing health plans into two groups regulated differently under the law: about 54 million people are covered by self-insured plans for which the employer, rather than an insurer, assumes the risk for paying for covered services and about 70 million people are covered by purchased insurance (according to 2000 information from the Census Bureau and the Department of Labor).

This report discusses intelligence issues for Congress including terrorism, conflicts between Israel and Palestine, in Iraq, and among the former Yugoslav states, and North Korean missile capabilities. Updated March 6, 2003.

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The Superfund Act contains several devices that eliminate the liability or reduce the transaction costs normally incurred under the Act by persons that acquire contaminated land. This report focuses on three of them, two addressed in the recently enacted brownfields law (P.L. 107-118). The first device is the innocent-landowner defense, available to persons who acquire land after the hazardous substance is put there, and who (among other things) find no contamination before acquisition despite “all appropriate inquiry.” The second device allows use of innocent-landowner status as a basis for early de minimis settlement with EPA. The third exempts the “bona fide prospective purchaser” from “owner” and “operator” liability despite pre-acquisition awareness of contamination on the property, if certain conditions are met.

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