Policy Library

6,587 documents

Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-14 · Resources · 1,339 words · PDF available
State and federal governments have long regulated safety practices at facilities that store large amounts of hazardous chemicals to reduce the risk of harm from an accidental release. In 2006, the Dep...
Accomplices, Aiding and Abetting, and the Like: An Overview of 18 U.S.C. § 2
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-14 · Reports · 8,905 words · PDF available
Virtually every federal criminal statute has a hidden feature; primary offenders and even their most casual accomplices face equal punishment. This is the work of 18 U.S.C. § 2, which visits the same ...
FY2020 NDAA Analysis: Elimination of Benefits Offset for Surviving Spouses and Related Legal Issues
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-13 · Posts · 2,262 words · PDF available
Efforts to eliminate a “benefits offset” that affects surviving spouses—widows and widowers of deceased military servicemembers—gained momentum in the 116th Congress. Bills to accomplish this had been...
Economic and Fiscal Conditions in the U.S. Virgin Islands
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-13 · Reports · 9,618 words · PDF available
Fiscal and economic challenges facing the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) government raise several issues for Congress. Congress may choose to maintain oversight of federal policies that could affect the U...
What Is An Autodialer? A Lingering Robocall Enforcement Question
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-13 · Posts · 1,636 words · PDF available
On December 30, 2019, President Trump signed the Pallone-Thune Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act (TRACED Act) into law. The TRACED Act is Congress’s latest effort to con...
The Internet of Things (IoT): An Overview
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-12 · Resources · 1,395 words · PDF available
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of interrelated devices connected to a network and/or to one another, exchanging data without necessarily requiring human-to-machine interaction. In other word...
Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and Medicare
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-11 · Resources · 1,741 words · PDF available
Medicare enrollment impacts an otherwise eligible individual’s ability to establish and contribute to a health savings account (HSA). Although Medicare enrollees cannot establish HSAs or make or recei...
Court Tosses Convictions for Killing ICE Agent Abroad
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-10 · Posts · 1,309 words · PDF available
In United States v. Garcia Sota, two defendants were each convicted on four counts under three different statutes—18 U.S.C. §§ 924(c), 1114, and 1116—for attacking a pair of U.S. Immigration and Custo...
FDA Regulation of Cannabidiol (CBD) Consumer Products
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-10 · Resources · 1,728 words · PDF available
Cannabidiol (CBD) is promoted as treatment for a range of conditions, including anxiety, pain, inflammation, and post-traumatic stress disorder—despite limited scientific evidence to substantiate or d...
The National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard: Overview and Selected Considerations
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-07 · Reports · 12,405 words · PDF available
/ In July 2016, Congress enacted P.L. 114-216 (2016 Act), comprehensive legislation to govern the labeling of bioengineered foods. The 2016 Act required the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to e...
Illicit Drug Smuggling Between Ports of Entry and Border Barriers
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-07 · Reports · 4,332 words · PDF available
Policy discussions around border security often involve questions about how illicit drugs flow into the United States. These include questions about the smugglers, types and quantities of illicit drug...
Role of Online Services in Entertainment Industry Diversity
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-07 · Resources · 1,659 words · PDF available
Government Interest in Media Diversity The representation of diverse points of view and diverse ownership of businesses within the television industry has long been of interest to Congress. Among othe...
Monetary Policy and the Federal Reserve: Current Policy and Conditions
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-06 · Reports · 14,269 words · PDF available
Congress has delegated responsibility for monetary policy to the Federal Reserve (the Fed), the nation’s central bank, but retains oversight responsibilities for ensuring that the Fed is adhering to i...
Inherited or “Stretch” Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) and the SECURE Act
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-06 · Resources · 1,483 words · PDF available
Background Traditional and Roth Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) provide tax-advantaged ways for individuals to save for retirement. Traditional IRA contributions can be tax deductible, but withd...
Wage Inequality and the Stagnation of Earnings of Low-Wage Workers: Contributing Factors and Policy Options
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-05 · Reports · 19,118 words · PDF available
Over the 1979-2018 period, real wages at the 10th percentile of the hourly wage distribution grew by 1.6%, whereas wages at the 50th percentile grew by 6.1% and wages at the 90th percentile grew by 37...
Oil Market Effects from U.S. Economic Sanctions: Iran, Russia, Venezuela
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-05 · Reports · 17,150 words · PDF available
Economic sanctions imposed by the United States—through enacted legislation and executive action—on Iran, Russia, and Venezuela aim to pressure the ruling governments to change their behavior and poli...
Federal Securities Laws: An Overview
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-05 · Resources · 1,664 words · PDF available
Securities Act of 1933 The Securities Act of 1933 (Securities Act) governs the process by which companies issue securities. The Act prohibits any person from offering or selling a security to the publ...
DHS Final Rule on Public Charge: Overview and Considerations for Congress
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-03 · Posts · 3,252 words · PDF available
On August 14, 2019, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a final rule that contains new regulations interpreting the public charge ground of inadmissibility in the Immigration and Nati...
Introduction to Financial Services: Corporate Governance
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-03 · Resources · 1,661 words · PDF available
Introduction Broadly speaking, corporate governance is the system through which a public company’s objectives and the means for obtaining them are established and monitored by the company’s board of d...
The Current State of Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform and Management
Congressional Research Service · 2020-02-03 · Reports · 3,119 words · PDF available
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has reported that the federal government budgets more than $90 billion each year on information technology (IT) investments. Historically, the projects suppo...
Safe Third Country Agreements with Northern Triangle Countries: Background and Legal Issues
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-30 · Posts · 2,789 words · PDF available
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently began implementing an agreement with the government of Guatemala that allows DHS to transfer some asylum seekers to that country instead of evaluatin...
USMCA: A Legal Interpretation of the Panel-Formation Provisions and the Question of Panel Blocking
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-30 · Resources · 1,704 words · PDF available
Congress has shown an interest in the effectiveness of the dispute settlement mechanism in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which will replace the North American Free Trade Agreement...
Competition on the Edge of the Internet
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-30 · Reports · 8,103 words · PDF available
Edge providers are individuals and entities that provide content, applications, services, and devices accessed over the internet. An edge provider can be a personal blog created by an individual or a ...
Overview of FY2020 Appropriations for Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS)
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-29 · Reports · 10,292 words
This report describes actions taken by the Trump Administration and Congress to provide FY2020 appropriations for Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) accounts. The annual CJS approp...
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement: A Summary
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-29 · Reports · 6,057 words · PDF available
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has been the principle forum for cooperation among nations on greenhouse gas (GHG)-induced climate change since its adoption in 1992....
Recent Slower Economic Growth in the United States: Policy Implications
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-28 · Reports · 8,095 words · PDF available
The current economic expansion is the longest in recorded U.S. history, but it has not been characterized by rapid economic growth. From the beginning of the current economic expansion in the third qu...
Government Expenditures on Defense Research and Development by the United States and Other OECD Countries: Fact Sheet
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-28 · Reports · 1,335 words · PDF available
Research and development (R&D) has played a central role in the national security of the United States and its allies. R&D creates the foundation for new and improved technologies that underpin a wide...
Aircraft Noise and Air Traffic Control Modernization
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-27 · Resources · 1,387 words · PDF available
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is replacing its radar-based air traffic control system with a satellite-based navigation and tracking system called NextGen. The stated purpose of NextGen is...
The Texas Border Barrier Litigation: Implications for Appropriations Law
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-24 · Posts · 2,518 words · PDF available
A little-noted rule of appropriations law and an obscure provision of Congress’s annual appropriations acts have assumed prominent roles in the Trump Administration’s effort to accelerate border-barri...
Federal Income Tax Treatment of the Family Under the 2017 Tax Revision
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-24 · Reports · 9,979 words · PDF available
The federal income tax treatment of the family is affected by several major structural elements applicable to all taxpayers: amounts deductible from taxable income through standard deductions, persona...
The Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) in Social Security: Comparing Current Law with Proposed Proportional Formulas
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-24 · Reports · 8,882 words · PDF available
Social Security is a work-based federal insurance program that provides income support to workers and their eligible family members in the event of a worker’s retirement, disability, or death. About 6...
Petitions for Rulemaking: An Overview
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-23 · Reports · 8,174 words · PDF available
The Administrative Procedure Act (APA), enacted in 1946, is known primarily for its procedural requirements for notice-and-comment rulemaking. Those requirements state that when issuing regulations, a...
The Legal Framework of the Federal Power Act
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-22 · Resources · 1,695 words · PDF available
The Federal Power Act (FPA or the Act) (16 U.S.C. §§ 791 et seq.) is the primary federal statute governing the wholesale transmission and sale of electric power, as well as the regulation of hydroelec...
Veterans’ Benefits and Bankruptcy
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-21 · Posts · 2,431 words · PDF available
Federal law entitles veterans to certain types of monetary benefits, such as compensation for disabled veterans injured in the line of duty. Recent statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau suggest, howe...
Obtaining Witnesses In an Impeachment Trial: Compulsion, Executive Privilege, and the Courts
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-21 · Posts · 2,423 words · PDF available
The Constitution grants the Senate wide-ranging discretion in the exercise of its “sole Power to try all Impeachments.” Beyond the requirements that the Constitution expressly sets forth (Senators sit...
FY2020 Appropriations for Agricultural Conservation
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-21 · Reports · 5,116 words · PDF available
The Agriculture appropriations bill funds the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) except for the Forest Service. The FY2020 Further Consolidated Appropriations Act (P.L. 116-94, Division B) includes...
FDA Regulation of Cannabidiol (CBD) Consumer Products: Overview and Considerations for Congress
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-21 · Reports · 15,401 words · PDF available
Cannabidiol (CBD), a compound in the Cannabis sativa plant, has been promoted as a treatment for a range of conditions, including epileptic seizures, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, inflammat...
China’s Corporate Social Credit System
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-17 · Resources · 1,662 words · PDF available
China’s construction of a nationwide social credit system has been identified as a major concern by both the executive branch and some Members of Congress, because of the broad controls such a system ...
Trying to Kill An FBI Agent: Sentence Too Low
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-16 · Posts · 1,153 words · PDF available
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (Second Circuit) on December 27, 2019, rejected as “shockingly low” a seventeen-year prison term imposed on a terrorist who attempted to kill ...
Social Security and Vulnerable Groups—Policy Options to Aid Widows
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-16 · Reports · 13,568 words · PDF available
As Congress actively considers Social Security reform options, one area of interest is Social Security policy levers to aid vulnerable groups—widows, low earners, caregivers, older beneficiaries, spou...
A Persistent and Evolving Threat: An Examination of the Financing of Domestic Terrorism and Extremism
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-15 · Testimony · 3,276 words · PDF available
Chairman Cleaver, Ranking Member Hill, Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Rena Miller, and I have been a Specialist in Financial Economics at the C...
Processing of Adults and Family Units Arriving at the Southern Border Without Valid Documents
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-14 · Infographics · 571 words
/ Processing of Adults and Family Units Arriving at the Southern Border Without Valid Documents The Trump Administration has implemented a series of policies that change the processing of non-U.S. na...
Presidential Pardons: Overview and Selected Legal Issues
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-14 · Reports · 14,543 words · PDF available
Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution authorizes the President “to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” The power has its roots...
Iran’s Central Bank Asks Supreme Court to Consider Whether the Bank’s Assets Abroad are Immune from Attachment to Satisfy Terror Judgments
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-14 · Posts · 1,081 words · PDF available
Update: The Supreme Court on January 13, 2020, granted review and vacated the decision below, remanding to the Second Circuit for reconsideration in light of section 1226 of the National Defense Autho...
Kashmir: Background, Recent Developments, and U.S. Policy
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-13 · Reports · 13,828 words · PDF available
In early August 2019, the Indian government announced that it would make major changes to the legal status of its Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) state, specifically by repealing Article 370 o...
Copyright Act and Communications Act Changes in 2019 Related to Television
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-13 · Reports · 10,279 words · PDF available
On December 20, 2019, President Donald J. Trump signed the Satellite Television Community Protection and Promotion Act of 2019, and the Television Viewer Protection Act of 2019 (Titles XI and X of Div...
Iranian Offensive Cyberattack Capabilities
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-13 · Resources · 1,587 words · PDF available
Threat Evolution Iran’s use of cyberspace has evolved from an internal means of information control and repression to more aggressive attacks on foreign targets. The regime has been developing its own...
Appeals Court Says First Amendment Limits Regulation of Online Political Advertising: Implications for Congress
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-10 · Posts · 2,189 words · PDF available
The proliferation of online political advertising has sparked a national conversation about its perceived harms. Some have argued that online political ads are more likely than their offline counterpa...
H.R. 1865 and the Look-Through Treatment of Payments Between Related Controlled Foreign Corporations
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-10 · Resources · 1,072 words · PDF available
The House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 1865, the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020, extended certain expiring provisions, including a number that were last extended through 20...
The SECURE Act and the Retirement Enhancement and Savings Act Tax Proposals (H.R. 1994 and S. 972)
Congressional Research Service · 2020-01-10 · Resources · 1,482 words · PDF available
Both the House and the Senate have considered legislation that addresses issues associated with tax-favored retirement plans. On May 23, the House passed the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement ...