Congressional Support Research Articles

Measuring Congressional Support for the President: Evaluating NOMINATE Scores

Assessing presidential influence in Congress requires accurate measures of legislators' baseline preferences. Common strategies extract preferences from roll‐call votes. One approach selects votes most likely to reveal uncorrupted, sincere preferences, and the other, NOMINATE, derives summaries of members' positions from large samples of votes. This article finds that NOMINATE scores do not accurately recover the relative positions of members in simulated legislatures. Errors increase with the number of policy dimensions and do not depend on agenda control or on vote trading. However useful NOMINATE is for summarizing voting patterns, this article cautions against this approach to measuring legislators' preferences.

Extending Copyright and the Constitution: 'Have I Stayed Too Long?'

The Sonny Bono Law extended the term of copyright protection by an additional twenty years, both prospectively and retrospectively. The former is probably constitutionally proper; the latter is almost certainly forbidden by the Constitution's copyright clause. Many proponents contend that any copyright legislation which yields a is constitutional. In a seemingly counterproductive tactic, some opponents of term extension have also embraced this theory, claiming that retrospective extension produces no public benefit or good, at the same time, however, implicitly supporting what is surely an ineffective argument - that can justify otherwise unauthorized copyright law. Most discussion of copyright term extension has involved the times phrase (as well as the test that appears nowhere in the Constitution). But copyright term extension also involves the promotion-of-progress phrase, and retrospective term extension is governed and surely effectively limited only by that phrase. The failure to identify these two distinctively different phrases - the limited-times phrase and the promotion-of-progress phrase - condemns the issue to one of hopelessly indecipherable constitutional confusion. The possibility of gaining unconstitutional retrospective extensions through the guise of prospective extensions has served to pervert the normal democratic processes. Applying Alaska Airlines to the Bono Law leads inescapably to the conclusion that its provisions are not severable because Congress simply would not have passed prospective extension without retrospective extension; realistically, of course, they would not even have been asked to consider prospective extension without enacting the only real goal of the bill: saving imminently terminating copyright terms. Thus, if the Supreme Court were to declare retrospective term extensions invalid as inconsistent with the Constitutional clause, it could safely decline review of future prospective extensions because, without the possibility of retrospective extension, few, if any, such extensions will ever garner Congressional support.

Culture Wars and NationalEducation Standards: Scale and the Struggle over Social Reproduction

America is embroiled in a culture war. National education standards have exacerbated the conflict. Supporters justify standards by adopting the rhetoric of globalization and national labor force preparedness. Opponents claim that standards threaten local control over value inculcation and social reproduction. This paper examines the “politics of scale” to hypothesize that conservatives have solicited Congressional support for local school choice and school prayer to subvert national education standards. Results from a multivariate analysis confirm that a significant link exists between Congressional opposition to education standards and support for school prayer and school choice.

NSF SEEKS LARGER ENVIRONMENTAL ROLE

Despite a gloomy forecast for congressional support, cautious support within the environment and science policy community, and some wariness at sister agencies within the federal government, the National Science Board (NSB) has voted to accept the recommendations of a board task force report that attempts to define a new path for the National Science Foundation in its support of environmental research. The report is called Environmental Science & Engineering for the 21st Century and is the work of the NSB Task Force on the Environment. NSB is the governing body of NSF. Along with acceptance of the report at NSB's meeting in late July, NSF Director Rita R. Colwell has championed the work of the task force and says she will seek $1 billion in new funding over the next five years to carry out its key recommendations. Although NSF has long funded environmental research—such programs account for about 20% of the agency's budget—the task ...

Clinton Proposes $4 Million for Newborn Hearing Screening

You have accessThe ASHA LeaderASHA News1 Mar 1999Clinton Proposes $4 Million for Newborn Hearing Screening Steve Davolt Steve Davolt Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.1044/leader.AN.04051999.1 SectionsAbout ToolsAdd to favorites ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In Universal newborn hearing screening edged closer to becoming reality last month when President Clinton proposed a $4 million initiative to support state grants for hearing screening programs. In light of past and present bipartisan congressional support, the sizeable White House request makes newborn hearing screening look like an idea whose time has come. According to the White House, the $4 million would fund 45 to 50 state and territorial grants to develop and expand newborn hearing screening programs. The grants would also link screening programs to community intervention, and monitor the impact of early detection and intervention on children, families and community service systems. Lastly, part of the appropriation would underwrite the new technology that would enable the states to conduct low-cost screenings on children prior to their release from the hospital. The Administration’s proposal resembles a provision in a bill introduced last year by Rep. James Walsh (R-NY) for $13 million over two years; Walsh is expected to introduce a similar bill in the 106th Congress that will ask for a third year of funding. After years of tenacious campaigning by concerned consumers, audiologists, ASHA and policy makers, passage of some version of the Walsh Bill seems likely to occur in 1999. Far from being a fait accompli, Clinton’s proposal was nevertheless praised by advocates as an endorsement of infant hearing screening by the White House. The Clinton Administration included the $4 million request in the fiscal year 2000 budget submitted to Congress for the Health Resources and Services Administration. ASHA President Donna Geffner welcomed the Clinton Administration’s support of state-based hearing screening programs: “This initiative is an important and encouraging step forward in our efforts to ensure early detection and intervention for hearing loss.” Currently, 10 states have newborn universal hearing screening programs: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming. As the ASHA Leader goes to press, 13 additional states anticipate introducing newborn hearing screening legislation this session. Many states have enacted newborn hearing screening legislation based on model legislation created by ASHA in 1996. “ASHA will continue to work with both Congress and the Administration to seek passage of legislation that makes a meaningful difference in promoting newborn hearing screening in all states,” Geffner said. For more information, see ASHA’s Model Universal Newborn Hearing Bill on ASHA’s Web site. Advertising Disclaimer | Advertise With Us Advertising Disclaimer | Advertise With Us Additional Resources FiguresSourcesRelatedDetails Volume 4Issue 5March 1999 Get Permissions Add to your Mendeley library History Published in print: Mar 1, 1999 Metrics Downloaded 89 times Topicsasha-topicsleader_do_tagleader-topicsasha-article-typesCopyright & Permissions© 1999 American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationLoading ...

A wolf in sheep’s cloning?

Cloning scares the hell out of people, because the idea of cloning people scares the hell out of people. Some of this fear is well-founded. Like any new reproductive technology, the cloning of entire human organisms can be put to good or bad effect, for good or bad reasons. But much of the fear is not well-founded. Before you could say “Hello, Dolly,” the U.S. administration moved to ban federal funding of human cloning research; and there is considerable support in Congress for an outright ban on the use of somatic cell nuclear transfer technology for the purpose of human cloning. Why? Here is part of Clinton’s statement announcing the funding ban: Each human life is unique, born of a miracle that reaches beyond laboratory science. I believe we must respect this profound gift and resist the temptation to replicate ourselves. This powerful rhetoric captures two very common intuitions concerning the putative wrongness of human cloning. First is the idea that something of ethical importance, present in normal procreation, must be missing in the cloning procedure or its product. Second is the description of cloning as “replication” rather than “reproduction,” with the implication that cloning is a threat to uniqueness. I think both of these common intuitions are entirely groundless, no matter what one’s metaphysical starting point.

Inward Bound: Domestic Institutions and Military Conflicts

In this article I explore the propensity of democracies to use military force when involved in international disputes. I argue that the use of force by democracies in large part results from the domestic circumstances confronting their chief executives and that those circumstances vary predictably across democracies based on the structure of their domestic institutions. For example, U.S. presidents must garner public support before elections and maintain widespread congressional support if they involve the country in long-term military conflicts. Conflicts are risky without either of these domestic prerequisites. Consider President Lyndon Johnson's decision to escalate U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Johnson and his advisors reached their decision in 1964 but waited until early 1965, after the November 1964 national election, to announce this decision publicly and implement it on the ground. President George Bush's 1990 decision to double the number of troops deployed to Kuwait and move from deterring an attack on Saudi Arabia to compelling an Iraqi withdrawal was made in a similar manner. The Bush administration decided on its new policy in early October but announced that decision only after Congress recessed and the midterm elections were completed.

Did the big six reverse their support for the FASB's executive stock option exposure draft for preparer community support of tort reform?

After years of calling for the FASB to require that executive stock options be expensed currently or allocated over a vesting period, the nation's largest CPA firms unexpectedly reversed themselves. They became surprisingly vociferous critics of any of the FASB proposals, including that of its ED, which would leave the estimated future costs, however derived, on the income statement. Many observers believe that corporate lobbies pressured the national firms into their reversal by threatening not to engage their services. However, it is problematic that this market threat alone was significant enough to reverse what is essentially an auditing oligopoly, especially for audits of the nation's largest corporations. Then what could have been so important to these firms that they would reverse the FASB's proposal they have originally initiated? Tort liability reform, really tort immunity reform, the chance to remove firm-breaking lawsuits by third parties, was up for approval in Congress. Did these accounting firms trade their accounting integrity for the preparer community's support in Congress for accounting tort reform?

Capturing the unexpected benefits of medical research.

Remarkable advances have been made recently in our understanding of the molecular and genetic bases of disease. The potential therapeutic opportunities offered by these scientific findings, combined with the expanding needs of an aging population, have led to broad-based congressional support for increases in the National Institutes of Health budget. These developments have put into sharp relief the question of how to allocate growing budgetary resources among the various categories of medical research. In addition to the need to support basic-science research, investigators and policy analysts alike have recently emphasized the need to invest in translational research and clinical evaluative . . .

Federal Unfunded Mandate Reform: A First-Year Retrospective

The Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA, P.L. 104-4) was enacted in 1995 as part of the Republicans' Contract with America. The act represented a remarkable convergence of interests that had been divergent for decades. Historically, the Congress had been reluctant to restrain itself from passing the costs of new programs and policies on to the states. That reluctance grew in tandem with the federal deficit, to the dismay of the states (see Conlan, 1991; Derthick, 1992; Zimmerman, 1992; St. George, 1995; Kelly, 1995; Ray and Conlan, 1996.) Congress's ability to satisfy the demand for new programs without raising taxes or reducing federal benefits became increasingly valuable as an ever larger share of the budget went to pay interest on the national debt. Bipartisan realization that the growing federal debt was taking on greater public saliency stimulated interest and support for the Balanced Budget Amendment. Many governors were reluctant to support such an amendment however, without some protection from unfunded mandates. They were concerned that the pressure for new programs and policies would remain constant, the budgetary bite of entitlements would increase, and the requirement for balancing the budget would shift the cost of entitlements or new programs and policies to the states. At their 1995 annual association meeting, the governors made their position clear--unfunded mandates protection first. Congressional Republicans agreed, and a new antimandates coalition was born. At the same time, local governments had achieved their own remarkable convergence of interests. The major local government advocacy groups, such as the National League of Cities, the National Association of Counties, and the National Conference of Mayors, had been pursuing antimandates legislation individually for the better part of a decade. Then, in 1994, the National Conference of Mayors and the National Association of Counties engaged the Price Waterhouse firm to survey municipalities and counties on the costs of mandates. They released the survey results on the NUM Day (for National Unfunded Mandates Day), October 27, 1993. They were joined in a rally on the steps of the Capitol by the National League of Cities, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Governors Association, and other representatives of state and local governments (see Beam and Conlan, 1995; Conlan, Riggle, and Schwartz, 1995; Kriz, 1995). The conclusions that Price Waterhouse reached about the costs of mandates were staggering (U.S. Conference of Mayors, 1993). The firm estimated that unfunded federal mandates cost localities approximately $11.3 billion in fiscal year 1993. The report figured prominently in the debate over the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA), although many outside observers questioned its methods and conclusions (Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, 1994). Still, the visibility afforded the issue of unfunded mandates as depicted in the report, when combined with a united coalition of state and local governments and an energized Republican Congress, was powerful enough to provide solid congressional support for the act. As it manifests its goals to improve the information the Congress receives about the effect of federal legislation on state, local, and tribal governments, and the private sector, and to make it more difficult for Congress to impose unfunded mandates on state and localities, the UMRA became the first promise fulfilled in the Republicans' Contract with America. This first-year retrospective examines how the UMRA has affected the legislative process. After a brief summary of the elements of Title I--the section of the law that addresses how mandates are identified and considered at the legislative stage--we examine the role of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in identifying mandates and calculating their costs. We then consider how that information was used by members of the 105th Congress as they deliberated five major bills that contained significant intergovernmental mandates. …

Guest Editorial: Are Large Public Organizations Manageable?

Americans like many big things: cars, open spaces, movies. But we don't like big bureaucracies. Americans think that large government organizations are too complex, too impersonal, too inefficient, and cost too much. They are partly right. But at the same time that Americans express a dislike of bureaucracy, they also treasure many of the programs that government runs. The paradox is illustrated by the comment of one individual: Keep your bureaucratic hands off of my Medicare. This paradox was very much on my mind in 1993 when the president asked me to become the chief executive officer (CEO) of one of the largest government organizations in the world. This was not my first encounter with the federal government; I had already served in the Carter administration and had close contact with government in my jobs as the president of two leading public universities. But I knew that taking over the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), a department whose budget, at that time, consumed 40 percent of federal spending--would be unlike anything I ever did before.(1) The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) includes more than 300 programs, covering a wide spectrum of activities in medical and social science research; food and drug safety; financial assistance and health care for low income, elderly, and disabled Americans; child support enforcement; maternal and infant health; substance abuse treatment and prevention; and services for older Americans. The $354 billion budget for Fiscal Year 1997 is implemented by 59,000 employees. The department is the largest grantmaking agency in the federal government, providing some 60,000 grants per year. It is also the nation's largest health insurer, handling more than 800 million claims per year. The department's programs are administered by 11 operating divisions in both headquarter locations as well as ten regional offices. The department has a vast array of constituencies that reflect its multiple programs. It works closely with state and local governments since many of the services funded by the department are provided by state or county agencies or through private sector grantees. Because of its size and complexity, HHS is one of the most difficult jobs in the world for a public official. It is also a department whose policies touch the lives of every American. While HHS has many unique attributes, it shares a number of elements with other federal departments. I found, for example, that the reflections of Carter Administration Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal (1979) on his experience were very useful as I began my tenure in HHS. As I reflect on my experience over the years, I must acknowledge that we have not accomplished everything we wanted to. All of us have taken some wrong turns and endured the hard lessons of that great teacher: experience. Let me start by knocking down two myths. The first, described by Hargrove and Glidewill (1990), is that my job--and others like it--are simply impossible. Too many difficult clients. Too many internal conflicts. Too little public confidence. But I found that it is nor true. Managing a large organization is the art of the possible, the art of finding the possible within what might be viewed as impossible pressures. The second myth goes back to the theories of Frederick Taylor (1967). He viewed organizations as essentially machines. He did not focus on the human dimensions of management, the personal challenges that any manager faces. His approach would lead a manager to believe that if you pull the right levers in the right way, you'll get the right result. Were it only that easy! In complex organizations there will be failures for any number of reasons: poor communication, impractical or unclear goals, lack of public or congressional support, lack of sufficient expertise or resources, too much--or too little--oversight, and too much work. Between these two extremes--that nothing works or that everything can be made to work --lies some basic truths about large modern organizations. …

First Congress of the United States tackled geophysics in 1789

When the first Congress of the United States under the new Constitution convened in the spring of 1789, one of the first orders of business involved a geophysical project. This involved, first, a petition from John Churchman for protection of an invention for determination of longitude using magnetic variation, and second, a request for congressional support for a voyage to Baffin's Bay to determine the cause of the magnetic variation. The discussions and arguments are an instructive introduction to those that arise when Congress considers scientific projects.The new government came into being after ratification by the requisite nine states. The new Congress met for the first time on March 4, 1789, in New York, but almost immediately adjourned in the absence of a quorum.

An Integrative Approach to Modeling Presidential Success in Congress

We propose and test an integrative multivariate model predicting aggregate annual presidential success on House and Senate roll calls from 1953 to 1994. We incorporate presidency-centered, Congress-centered, agenda, and timing variables in our analysis. Our results show that there are important similarities and dissimilarities across legislative chambers. For both chambers, the percentage of co-partisans of the president and when they came into office are important. A presidential honeymoon with Congress, however, is evident in the House of Representatives, but not in the Senate. Also, the House equation does a substantially better job of explaining the variation in presidential success than does the Senate equation. We argue that an integrative approach offers a more satisfactory statistical and substantive explanation of presidential success than an approach based on asingleperspective. The presidency-centered view of presidential-congressional relations emphasizes the importance of presidential skills, popularity, and personality in determining presidents' legislative success (Barber 1993; Hager and Sullivan 1994; Kellerman 1984; Neustadt 1960; Sullivan 1991). Sullivan (1991), for example, finds that presidents have the ability to increase their initial levels of support in Congress. Moreover, he finds that presidential popularity influences the presidents' ability to sway members from their initial positions. A view competes with this perspective, which highlights the partisan and ideological composition of Congress as the primary determinant of legislative victory or defeat (Bond and Fleisher 1990; Edwards 1989; Oppenheimer 1993). The acceptance of the Congress-centered view is based on the dominance of party affiliation in individual-level regression models predicting presidential support, and of chamber party composition in aggregate-level models of presidential agreement or success in getting legislation passed; in contrast, presidency centered variables (such as the president's Gallup approval ratings or perceived levels of legislative skill) have weak and inconsistent effects in such models. Obviously, neither perspective should be overemphasized, and some scholars have called for a more balanced, tandem perspective (Jones 1994; Peterson 1990). According to this point of view, it is rare for either Congress or the president to win or lose a legislative battle unambiguously, and each player has a significant role in determining the outcome. These studies tend to combine the quantitative approach emphasized by the congress-centered literature with the qualitative approach stressed by the presidency-centered scholars. In recent years, political scientists have introduced yet another way to view presidential congressional relations. They suggest looking beyond the participants in the legislative process and examining the nature of the process itself. This perspective-which we might call the structural perspectiveincludes a variety of factors. There are temporal factors, such as the trends and cycles in presidential influence and the election calendar. Presidents, for example, might be advantaged by an influx of new members who are elected along with the president. These new members might be especially loyal to the wishes of the president. After an intervening election has passed, however, the impetus of new members of the president's party to be especially supportive might dissipate. Institutional factors, such as the differences in rules across legislative chambers, might contribute to an explanation of presidential success. Last, agenda factors, such as whether the issue under consideration is foreign or domestic policy or if the issue is one favored or initiated by the president as opposed to wholly independent congressional proposals might play a role. While some of these variables have been examined in earlier work on the presidency, the research that specifically employs this perspective is of reasonably recent vintage (for example, Brace and Hinckley 1992; Covington, Wrighton, and Kinney 1995; Jones 1994; Light 1989; Skorownek 1993; Sullivan 1991). …

Explorations in Public Opinion-Presidential Power Linkages: Congressional Action on Unpopular Foreign Agreements

This article explores the effect of public opinion on congressional action on foreign agreements, focusing on the Panama Canal treaties of 1977 and the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1993. The two agreements are highly suited to comparison, and provide an excellent test of how shifts in public opinion influence shifts in congressional support. Two types of opinion are included: (1) the general rating of the President's job performance, and (2) opinion on the foreign agreement being debated in Congress. Using quantitative methods, I test the respective influence of each of these types of opinion on congressional action. Both types of public opinion are regressed on head counts and votes taken on the two agreements, with the expectation that the more specific opinion data will be more influential.

Easing the Squeeze on R&D

A strong economy and broad support in Congress augur well for R&D to do even better in next year9s budget battles than it did this year. There are already signs that the era of stagnant budgets may be over: When Congress adjourned last week, it had increased R&D spending for 1998 by 4%--twice the amount requested by the White House. And a growing number of politicians are talking about how R&D spending could rise significantly next year if the deficit disappears as early as next year rather than in 2002, as projected in this summer9s budget agreement. But any new round of spending is sure to trigger stiff competition.

Aligning Tests with Theory: Presidential Approval as a Source of Influence in Congress

Over the past twenty years there has been a growing literature regarding the impact of the president's public approval and his success or support in Congress. Some studies have found very strong relationships while others have concluded that the relationship between presidential approval and congressional support is weak or nonexistent. Further complicating this issue is the virtual unanimity with which presidents and their aides assert the importance of the president's public standing to an administration's legislative success. There can be little doubt that the White House invests enormous amounts of time and energy in its efforts to obtain public support for the president, but it remains unclear (at least to political scientists) how this potential resource is translated into a tool of presidential leadership in Congress. In this paper I encourage scholars to take a fresh look at the question of the impact of presidential approval on presidential support in Congress. At the center of this rethinking, I suggest, should be more careful reasoning about the theoretical underpinnings of the relationship and more rigorous design of tests that evaluate this theory. I argue that the impact of presidential approval on congressional support for the president, if there is any, will be a broad background influence rather than one that shifts rapidly and causes immediate change in congressional support. Thus, we must fashion a test that is capable of capturing a broad influence rather than one that investigates a simple one-to-one impact.

Firmer Footing for Delayed Station

Congressional support for the international space station program rose last week after NASA assured legislators that Russia is keeping its promise to build its parts and that the first component of the $30 billion orbiting lab would be launched only 8 months late, in June 1998.

Budgetary Foul Weather

The author is an independent consultant and Distinguished Visiting Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He is also past president of the American Meteorological Society. E-mail: datlas@trmm.gsfc.nasa.gov Time and again the atmospheric science community has been urged to speak out and lobby Congress in support of its programs. But the vast majority of our community are government employees who are precluded from lobbying, and our professional society—the American Meteorological Society—is also limited in this respect. As one of the few who are not so inhibited, I raise my voice in the hope of avoiding an environmental public policy disaster. The across-the-board cuts in funding for most agencies, many beginning in the current fiscal year, are creating especially stormy weather for the National Weather Service (NWS). The NWS is about two-thirds of the way through a 12-year, $4.5-billion modernization program authorized and funded by a bipartisan Congress. This program has given birth to a national network of 164 Doppler radars, which have already demonstrated their value to public safety by increasing the warning time for tornadoes to an average of 11 minutes—enough to save the lives of hundreds to thousands of people each year. It has also created a new generation of geosynchronous satellites, which provide more frequent and improved data that increase the accuracy of warnings of severe thunderstorms and hurricanes, not to mention the immense contributions to aviation safety. The modernization program has produced other benefits. Improvements in the polar orbiting satellites and in methods of incorporating their measurements into numerical prediction models developed by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) (arguably the foremost prediction center of its kind in the world), as well as greatly improved computer models, have increased the accuracy of mid-range forecasts. Five-day forecasts are now made with the same accuracy that characterized 3-day forecasts 20 years ago. Last year, in its 24-hour forecasts of hurricane tracks, NCEP reduced the 10-year average error of 95 miles by 24%. This winter, NCEP showed increased accuracy in predicting the location and amount of precipitation in the flood-prone areas of the northwest. And after many years of research on long-range prediction, NCEP and its academic colleagues have attained modest but significant improvements in 6- to 12-month forecasts, based on understanding of El Niño and the Southern Oscillation. Further improvements in accuracy and in the weather products furnished to the weather-sensitive industries will come from completion of the modernization program and from additional advances in observation and modeling. To realize the benefits of these new observations and models, the NWS must have a robust information-processing and display system that is capable of rapidly and efficiently digesting the unprecedented quantity of data and imagery now available. This is supposed to be accomplished by AWIPS, the Automated Weather Information Processing System. However, to date only 15 prototype AWIPS systems have been delivered. Twenty-one more are authorized, but budget cuts threaten the remaining 112. In addition, NCEP has been ordered to make immediate reductions in force that threaten its services to the public and its very existence. If these cuts are made, we may anticipate resignations of the top scientists and managers at NCEP and throughout the NWS. Morale at the NWS is at a very low ebb. These advances the NWS has made are not pie in the sky—they are real. And they are as critical to the health and welfare of the public, to aviation safety, and to the national economy (because of their effect on the weather-vulnerable agricultural and industrial communities) as are the impressive actual and potential advances made in medicine in recent years. One need not conduct a cost-benefit analysis to demonstrate the value of the NWS and its modernization program. With the enthusiastic support of Congress and several administrations of both parties, plus the incredible creativity and dedication of hundreds of scientists, engineers, and managers in government, industry, and academe, the NWS has nearly reached its goal. What a waste it would be to jeopardize the completion of this impressive program for want of a relatively modest continuation of the funds that are needed. Our community does not seek immunity from the national belt-tightening; all we ask is that it be done in a way that does not waste the vast investments in time and money that have brought us this far and does not endanger the infrastructure that has made it all possible.

NASA in crisis: The space agency's public relations efforts regarding the hubble space telescope

This study examines NASA's public relations efforts regarding the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990. It proposes that NASA's poor public relations exacerbated the problems caused by the telescope's spherical aberration. To a great extent, NASA brought the crisis on itself. It oversold the telescope before it was deployed; it failed to developed a clear plan for dealing with first-light images and early release of photographs; it provided misleading flight reports; and it reported prematurely and incorrectly that the Hubble could not produce photographs. NASA's poor handling of the Hubble, coupled with its poor handling of the Challenger explosion, suggests the agency must improve its crisis communications if it hopes to maintain the trust and support of Congress and the American people into the twenty-first century.

Implementing the Chief Financial Officers Act and the Government Performance and Results Act in the Federal Government

The Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 and the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, along with other legislation passed by Congress, are stimulating major financial management reform in the federal government. This article evaluates reform implementation against nine criteria developed in previous research on this topic. The criteria are accounting system adequacy, congressional intent, ability of Congress to use financial statement data, executive branch implementation incentives, capability of the Office of Management and Budget, utility of financial statements for decision making, use of performance measures in budgeting, coordination of federal organizations charged with implementation responsibility, and executive and congressional support for reform.