Appropriations are one part of a complex federal budget process that includes budget resolutions, appropriations (regular, supplemental, and continuing) bills, rescissions, and budget reconciliation bills. This report is a guide to one of the 13 regular appropriations bills that Congress passes each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Treasury, Postal Service, Executive Office of the President, and General Government.

A general tax cut (H.R. 2488), costing $792 billion over 10 years, was vetoed in September 1999. A more narrowly focused bill (H.R. 1180) extending certain expiring provisions was adopted in December. Several tax proposals have been or are likely to be considered in 2000. The largest of these was marriage penalty legislation (H.R. 6 and S. 2346). Tax provisions are also included in health care legislation and minimum wage legislation; the latter passed the House on March 9 and included distressed communities legislation and a repeal of the installment sales provision included in the extenders bill. A number of separate tax bills are also under consideration. The general tax cut proposal included across-the-board tax cuts, benefits for married couples, phase-out of the alternative minimum tax, a reduction in capital gains taxes, a phase-out of the estate tax and provisions relating to education and health.

Gender-based discrimination, harassment, and violence against women in the home, workplace, and society at large are continuing topics of legislative and judicial concern. Legal doctrines condemning the extortion of sexual favors as a condition of employment or job advancement, and other sexually offensive workplace behaviors resulting in a "hostile environment," have evolved from judicial decisions under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and related federal laws.

Weekly newspaper from Rusk, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with extensive advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Albany, Texas that includes local, county, and state news along with extensive advertising.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Essential Air Service (EAS) program, focusing on: (1) changes in the number of communities and passengers receiving subsidized service; (2) changes in the level of subsidies provided; and (3) reasons why the subsidy levels changed."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed what the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Department of Defense (DOD) have done and what more they could do to reduce drug prices and dispensing costs, focusing on the: (1) extent of joint DOD and VA drug contracting thus far and the prospects for further contracting; (2) prospects of DOD using VA's consolidated mail outpatient pharmacy (CMOP) centers to handle its hospital outpatient pharmacy refill workload; and (3) possible need for measures to facilitate such joint actions to bring about further improvements."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Breast Cancer Research Semipostal (BCRS), focusing on the: (1) appropriateness and effectiveness of the BCRS as a fundraiser; and (2) costs associated with developing and selling the BCRS."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the potential security risk to the United States posed by the use of stolen or counterfeit law enforcement badges and credentials."

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) new rule on federal motor vehicle safety standards and occupant crash protection. GAO noted that: (1) the final rule amends the occupant crash protection standard to require that future air bags be designed to create less risk of serious air bag-induced injuries than current air bags, particularly for small women and young children; (2) NHTSA complied with the applicable requirements with one exception; (3) the final rule has an announced effective date of June 12, 2000; (4) the Congressional Review Act requires major rules to have a 60-day delay in their effective date following publication in the Federal Register or receipt of the rule by Congress, whichever is later; and (5) the rule was not published in the Federal Register until May 12, 2000, which means the final rule will not have the required 60-day delay in the effective date."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed certain aspects of the Judicial Survivors' Annuities Systems (JSAS), which provides annuities to the surviving spouses and dependent children of deceased federal judges and other judicial officials who participate in JSAS."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on how federal agencies should assess the quality of program performance data."

Weekly newspaper published in Duncanville, Texas that includes local Cedar Hill, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Port Aransas, Texas on Mustang Island that includes local, state and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Tulia, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with extensive advertising.

A better understanding of the formation of large-scale structure in the Universe is arguably the most pressing question in cosmology. The most compelling and promising theoretical paradigm, Inflation + Cold Dark Matter, holds that the density inhomogeneities that seeded the formation of structure in the Universe originated from quantum fluctuations arising during inflation and that the bulk of the dark matter exists as slowing moving elementary particles (cold dark matter) left over from the earliest, fiery moments. Large redshift surveys (such as the SDSS and 2dF) and high-resolution measurements of CBR anisotropy (to be made by the MAP and Planck Surveyor satellites) have the potential to decisively test Inflation + Cold Dark Matter and to open a window to the very early Universe and fundamental physics.

A new method of ultrasensitive trace-isotope analysis has been developed based upon the technique of laser manipulation of neutral atoms. It has been used to count individual {sup 85}Kr and {sup 81}Kr atoms present in a natural krypton sample with isotopic abundances in the range of 10{sup {minus}11} and 10{sup {minus}13}, respectively. The atom counts are free of contamination from other isotopes, elements,or molecules. The method is applicable to other trace-isotopes that can be efficiently captured with a magneto-optical trap, and has a broad range of potential applications.

The surface termination of c-axis oriented YBa{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}O{sub 7{minus}{delta}} (YBCO) and the oxygen incorporation mechanism has been investigated using a unique combination of spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) and time of flight ion scattering and recoil spectrometry (ToF-ISARS). The high surface sensitivity of the ToF-ISARS technique combined with the bulk oxygen sensitivity of SE are shown to yield complimentary information. The SE provided the film orientation and quality, while ToF-ISARS supplied surface compositional and structural information and enabled isotopic {sup 18}O tracer studies. It was determined that the O content of the film had little effect on the surface termination of the film, indicating a lack of labile Cu(1) sites at the c-axis oriented YBCO surface. Also, strong evidence for a Ba or BaO terminated structure is shown. The data related to the {sup 18}O tracer studies indicate that O from the reaction ambient incorporates only into the labile Cu(1) sites during both deposition and annealing, while stable O sites were populated with O from the sputtered target, indicating either the need for sputtered atomic O or sputtered YCuO complexes to occupy the stable Cu(2) sites.

During the transport of tank waste, it is very important to quantitatively measure the percent solids concentration (PSC) of the waste, which indicates the flow conditions and the extent of solids settling. At Argonne National Laboratory, an in-line, real-time, a nonintrusive ultrasonic monitoring system has been developed to measure the PSC and flow density of tank waste by measuring sound velocity and attenuation in the flow. This system consists of a pair of longitudinal transducers bonded to waveguides on the opposite sides of the pipe and operating at IMHz simultaneously in pulse-and-echo and pitch-and-catch modes. The PSC measurement is provided by attenuation, while the density measurement is calculated by impedance and sound velocity. A thermocouple is attached to one of the waveguides for automatic temperature correction of the measurements. This system was one of four evaluated for in-line measurement of slurry at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1998. The results indicate that the measurements are in good agreement with a Coriolis meter and that the system can be used to monitor PSC up to 40 wt.%. However, the system is greatly affected by entrained air bubbles within the solid flow during Puisair mixing. A different mixing mechanism will solve this …

The National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) started plasma operations in February 1999, and promptly achieved high current, inner wall limited, double null, and single null plasma discharges, initial Coaxial Helicity Injection, and High Harmonic Fast Wave results. NSTX is designed to study the physics of Spherical Tori (ST) in a device that can produce non-inductively sustained high-{beta} discharges in the 1 MA regime and to explore approaches toward a small, economical high power density ST reactor core. As expected, discharge reproducibility and performance were strongly affected by wall conditions. In this paper, the authors describe the internal geometry, and initial plasma discharge, impurity control, wall conditioning, erosion, and deposition results.

Electroweak symmetry breaking may be naturally induced by the observed quark and gauge fields in extra dimensions without a fundamental Higgs field. The authors show that a composite Higgs doublet can arise as a bound state of (t,b){sub L} and a linear combination of the Kaluza-Klein states of t{sub R}, due to QCD in extra dimensions. The top quark mass depends on the number of active t{sub R} Kaluza-Klein modes, and is consistent with the experimental value.

The ability to withstand disruptions makes carbon-based materials attractive for use as plasma-facing components in divertors. However, such materials suffer high erosion rates during attached plasma operation which, in high power long pulse machines, would give short component lifetimes and high tritium inventories. The authors present results from recent experiments in DIII-D, in which the Divertor Materials Evaluation System (DiMES) was used to examine erosion and deposition during short exposures to well defined plasma conditions. These studies show that during operation with detached plasmas, produced by gas injection, net erosion is suppressed everywhere in the divertor. Net deposition of carbon with deuterium was observed at the inner and outer strikepoints and in the private-flux region between strikepoints. For these low temperature plasmas (T{sub e} < 2eV), physical sputtering is eliminated. These results show that with detached plasmas, the location of carbon net erosion and the carbon impurity source, probably lies outside the divertor. Physical or chemical sputtering by charge-exchange neutrals or ions in the main plasma chamber is a probable source of carbon under these plasma conditions.

The discovery of the W and Z gauge bosons at the Sp{bar p}S in 1983 marked the beginning of direct electroweak measurements at a hadron machine. These measurements vindicated the tree level predictions of the Standard Model. The new generation of hadron collider machines now have data of such precision that the electroweak measurements are probing the quantum corrections to the Standard Model. The importance of these quantum corrections was recognized in the award of the 1999 Nobel Price. These corrections are being tested by a wide variety of measurements ranging from atomic parity violation in cesium to precision measurements at the Z pole and above in e{sup +}e{sup {minus}} collisions. In this article, the latest experimental electroweak data from hadron machines is reviewed. The author has taken a broad definition of a hadron machine to include the results from NuTeV ({nu}N collisions) and HERA (ep collisions) as well as the results of the Tevatron (p{bar p} collisions). This is not an exhaustive survey of all results, but a summary of the new results of the past year and in particular those results which have an influence on the indirect determination of the Higgs mass. This article will cover the …

A literature survey and technical evaluation was carried out of past and present battery technologies with the goal of identifying appropriate candidates for use in geothermal borehole and, to a lesser extent, oil/gas boreholes. The various constraints that are posed by such an environment are discussed. The promise as well as the limitations of various candidate technologies are presented. Data for limited testing of a number of candidate systems are presented and the areas for additional future work are detailed. The use of low-temperature molten salts shows the most promise for such applications and includes those that are liquid at room temperature. The greatest challenges are to develop an appropriate electrochemical couple that is kinetically stable with the most promising electrolytes--both organic as well as inorganic--over the wide operating window that spans both borehole environments.