Congressional Support Research Articles

GOOD NEWS FOR SCIENCE BUDGETS

AFTER SEVERAL YEARS of fumbling the appropriations process, Congress is off to a better start this year. Among its timely actions, Congress is close to passing its first major 2010 funding bill for science and technology, with significant increases slated for research and education. The House of Representatives has passed the Commerce, Justice, Science & Related Agencies (CJS) Appropriations Act for fiscal 2010 (H.R. 2847), which includes funding for the National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics & Space Administration, and the National Institute of Standards & Technology. Research funding at all of these agencies would go up. And the Senate Appropriations Committee has unanimously approved its version of the bill covering the same agencies, opening the way for a final vote by the full Senate. Along with the Energy Department’s Office of Science, the three science agencies have also benefited from additional funds from the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and have congressional support f...

Congress and Foreign Policy: Congressional Action on the Darfur Genocide

ABSTRACTAs of January 2008, more than 400,000 people have been killed and more than 2.5 million people have been displaced in the regions of Darfur and Chad. This event has not gone unnoticed in the United States, as the 109th United States Congress (2005–2006) considered several measures in the House of Representatives to provide funding and peacekeeping forces to quell the violence in Darfur. The goal of this article is to explain individual members' of Congress (MCs') support for Darfur legislation by examining the influence of their individual, district, and institutional characteristics. The Darfur case provides the opportunity to analyze factors critical to congressional behavior in a context where there is reason to expect an MC's usual set of incentives—e.g., reelection and adherence to party—to be less prominent. In all, we contribute to congressional and foreign policy research by parceling out the determinants of congressional support for foreign policy in comparison to domestic policy.

Does the Sarbanes-Oxley Act Have a Future?

Although the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) received nearly unanimous congressional support, only a few years thereafter its wisdom was increasingly questioned and its supporters had to stave off attempts to recraft the legislation. The financial crisis of 2008 has sidelined efforts to alter the legislation’s most costly provision, as Congress’s attention has turned to overhauling the regulatory regime for financial institutions. There is, nonetheless, much to be learned about financial regulation and SOX’s future, from an in-depth examination of the interplay of the government and private commissions created with an eye to revising the legislation, media coverage of those entities, and congressional responses. That interaction provides a map of political fault lines and assists in forecasting the prospects for recrafting SOX’s most costly provision. It also serves as a cautionary tale regarding significant regulation enacted in the midst of a financial market crisis. The ongoing financial crisis has sidelined SOX, but its burdensome costs suggest that it might well, in due course, reemerge on the legislative agenda.

The Last Trillion-Dollar Commitment: The Destruction of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

The government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was necessary because of their massive losses on more than $1.6 trillion of subprime and Alt-A investments, almost all of which were added to their single-family book of business between 2005 and 2007. The most plausible explanation for the sudden adoption of this disastrous course-disastrous for them and for the U.S. financial markets—is their desire to retain the support of Congress after their accounting scandals in 2003 and 2004 and the challenges to their business model that ensued. Although the strategy worked-Congress did not adopt strong government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) reform legislation until the Republicans demanded it as the price for Senate passage of a housing bill in July 2008—it led inevitably to the government takeover and the enormous junk loan losses still to come. Now that the federal government has been required to take effective control of Fannie and Freddie and to decide their fate, it is important to understand the reasons for their financial collapse—what went wrong and why. That is the purpose of this article. <b>TOPICS:</b>Financial crises and financial market history, legal and regulatory issues for structured finance

Economics, Lobbying, and U.S. Congressional Support for Taiwan: Buying American Support, 2002–2006

As Taiwan-U.S. trade has increased, I hypothesize that there is a relationship between increased Taiwanese importation of U.S. exports and greater American congressional support for Taiwan. This analysis, however, finds no such empirical correlation. Instead, support for Taiwan seems to be based more on shared norms of democracy and human rights.

U.S. Senators’ Support for Israel Examined Through Sponsorship/Cosponsorship Decisions, 1993-2002: The Influence of Elite and Constituent Factors

This paper explores Senate policy-making toward Israel from 1993–2002. Previous scholarship suggests that congressional policymaking toward Israel is heavily influenced by the ethnic and religious identification of both legislators and their constituents, not simply by legislators' abstract perceptions of the national interest. Other literature de-emphasizes the likelihood that constituent interests will affect Congressional foreign policy making. We test for an impact of both elite and constituent characteristics on Congressional support for Israel, using sponsorship–cosponsorship decisions in the 103rd–107th Congresses. Israel's strongest supporters in this period are shown to be Jewish, conservative, Republican, and evangelical senators. Notably, elite characteristics (partisanship, ideology, and religion) matter more than constituency factors, with the exception of the Jewish population in senators' home states. While Jewish and conservative senators have long been vocal supporters of Israel, evangelical and Republican senators have not historically taken such a strong pro-Israel stance; hence they are relatively new additions to the active pro-Israel coalition. Thus the pro-Israel coalition shows both continuity and change as it has broadened to include new partners. However, we suggest that this coalition is not necessarily stable and may undergo further evolution in the future.

Patient-Centered Medical Home: Renewing Primary Care

Patient-Centered Medical Home: Renewing Primary Care

Congress, Presidential Approval, and U.S. Dispute Initiation

Do presidents initiate disputes in response to low public approval ratings? Although research on the diversionary use of force finds links between poor economic conditions and military disputes, findings evaluating the effect of presidential approval ratings typically fail to support the diversionary hypothesis. But this research tends to neglect the role of presidential-congressional relations in the president's foreign policy making processes. This paper applies the policy availability argument to the puzzle: legislative constraints on presidential action during periods of low public approval compel the president to pursue alternatives that he can implement largely on his own in order to display his leadership skills—including the use of military force abroad. The argument is tested by examining the interactive effects of congressional support for the president and presidential approval ratings on the propensity to initiate militarized interstate disputes from 1949 to 2000. The results indicate that the president is more likely to use force in response to low presidential approval when faced with low congressional support.

Inertia Mires Bills to Fix Biased Medicare Copay

Inertia Mires Bills to Fix Biased Medicare Copay

Lessons From The Clinton Plan: Incremental Market Reform, Not Sweeping Government Control

The Clinton health reform attempt in the mid-1990s and the U.S. experience since then suggest some clear lessons for the next U.S. president. Public confidence in a major reform proposal must be won, and congressional support must be garnered, even if the election is a landslide. Insisting on universal coverage as a precondition may undercut the ability to enact other policies needed to improve the health system. Excessive regulation and price controls are likely to exacerbate underlying problems. The next president should take full advantage of market incentives to promote a high-value health system.

The Uncertain Future of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act

Although the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) received nearly unanimous support when enacted, only a few years thereafter its wisdom is increasingly being questioned and its supporters are having to stave off attempts to recraft the legislation. SOX has produced a barrage of complaints, particularly for imposing unwarranted costs, especially on smaller firms, and for contributing to a decline in the competitiveness of U.S. capital markets. After providing a context by reviewing the political dynamics that produced SOX, mapping out the positions of commissioned reports that have recommended revising it and empirical research bearing upon the recommendations, the paper examines media coverage by national journalists and national and regional newspapers to gauge better the political salience of SOX's critics and the increasing support in Congress to revise the legislation, including an analysis of floor votes on exempting small firms. It concludes with a prognosis on SOX's future.

Near-Term Energy Research Prospers

U.S. BUDGET 2009The recent rapid growth at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory reflects the strong support in Congress for research aimed at tackling global warming by making near-term adjustments to the country's existing energy sources.

Robert Browne and Full Employment

Among the valuable contributions Robert Browne made in his career was the role he played in shaping the “Equal Opportunity and Full Employment Bill of 1974” that was introduced by Congressman Augustus Hawkins of California. Browne defined full employment as “a condition in which all persons willing and able to work, no matter what their race, gender, or national origin would be guaranteed a job”. In his view, if the private sector was unable to produce full employment, the government should act as the employer of last resort. Language in support of that view was included in the Hawkins bill. Robert Browne believed only a national policy to achieve that goal would eliminate racial disparities in employment and unemployment—a long term reality in the American labor market. The 1974 Hawkins bill was met with only tepid Congressional support, little notice from civil rights leaders, and no response from the business community. Little was done to advance full employment legislation until Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota embraced the cause in 1975. Negotiations with Congressman Hawkins led to the development of the “Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1975,” a legislative measure to replace the Employment Act of 1946. The new bill was commonly known as the Humphrey–Hawkins Full Employment Bill. Robert Browne offered far less support for the new bill than for the original full employment bill introduced by Mr. Hawkins. The Humphrey Hawkins Bill failed to provide explicitly a job guarantee for all workers, and included an inflation target to make price stability co-equal with full employment as a national policy objective. The Humphrey–Hawkins Bill was enacted into law in 1978, and remains the nation's policy dictum on full employment to this day.

Science in Flux: NASA's Nuclear Program at Plum Brook Station, 1955–2005 (review)

Reviewed by: Science in Flux: NASA’s Nuclear Program at Plum Brook Station, 1955–2005 Matthew H. Hersch (bio) Science in Flux: NASA’s Nuclear Program at Plum Brook Station, 1955–2005. By Mark D. Bowles . Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2006 Pp. xxix+335. $25. The image that graces the dust jacket of Science in Flux—a goofy 1959 rendering of an atomic spaceship—suggests not what one cold war nuclear research facility actually achieved, but everything it could not. Erected on an old TNT works in seismically somnolent Sandusky, Ohio, the federal government's Plum Brook Station operated only from 1963 to 1973, and it closed with neither a bang nor a whimper; rather, it disappeared into a probability cloud. According to Mark Bowles's exhaustive biography of this laboratory (winner of the 2005 Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics History Manuscript Award), some labs have more to tell scholars through their disuse than through their use. Locals once feared that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was hiding UFOs in Plum Brook's dormant containment vessels, but Bowles reveals more sinister ghosts lurking at the derelict station: low-level radiation and the decline of "big science." That said, Plum Brook achieved about as much as any laboratory founded on an intelligence failure. In the mid-1950s, belief that a nuclear-powered airplane was practical in the near-term—and that the Soviet Union already had one—triggered a crash program in radiation research by the precursor to NASA, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. Although the experts were wrong on both counts, by the time Plum Brook's main fission reactor went critical, a contest to build spaceships had replaced the one for long-range airplanes, and NASA's only nuclear test facility appeared well suited to support this new effort. If many recall President John F. Kennedy's 1961 challenge to explore the Moon, Bowles remarks, few remember that Kennedy advocated, in the same speech, the development of nuclear-powered rockets. Beginning in 1963, Plum Brook's researchers studied the effects of neutron radiation—the "flux" of the book's title—on materials and components destined for atomic engines and other space-based reactors. As Bowles points out, though, Plum Brook science was both of flux and in flux. Where Plum Brook's original NACA mandate had weak technical underpinnings but a broad political mandate, projects like the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application (NERVA) were scientifically workable but shielded by paper-thin congressional support. By 1972, Plum Brook had become both peripheral to NASA's space exploration plans and, as radiation factory, a growing environmental menace. Already committed to funding the space shuttle, NASA pulled the plug on Plum Brook, mothballing the site instead of pursuing a more costly decommissioning. The facility [End Page 246] may yet prove useful, but it now sits, mostly dismantled, as part of NASA's Glenn (formerly Lewis) Research Center. Even though one might expect Plum Brook's staff to have been a fatalistic bunch, they wept when their world-class main reactor went cold. The facility's 700 researchers (most of them engineers) loved working at Plum Brook and were proud of its safety record. Even Myrna Steele liked being there, despite enduring endless teasing for being both a woman and—even worse—a physicist. Insightful insiders always suspected, however, that NASA might close the place at any time. While Plum Brook trained a generation of nuclear engineers and performed valuable materials tests and chemical analyses, the facility made no major scientific discoveries and took its research cues from elsewhere. Work on portable nuclear generators yielded usable space hardware, but NERVA never advanced beyond design studies and test reactors. Scattered around the world in labs and college campuses, research reactors produce no electricity, just data and headaches, and Bowles is quite right that few historians have written about them. Connecting Plum Brook's story to the growing body of work on engineering practice, twentieth-century technoscience, and nuclear history, Bowles deserves a great deal of credit for demonstrating such admirable fidelity to a challenging subject. His story has the narrative arc of an episode of VH1's...

Presidential Campaigning in the 2002 Congressional Elections

Theories involving coattails, surge and decline, presidential popularity, and the economy ascribe little importance to presidential efforts to influence congressional elections. Since such efforts do occur, we ask: What happens when a president campaigns for fellow partisans? We examined President George W. Bush's decisions to campaign for certain House candidates in 2002, and we assessed the effect of his visits on Republicans' electoral successes. Both the competitiveness of a race and the president's electoral self‐interest increased the likelihood of a visit on behalf of a candidate. Neither party loyalty nor presidential support in Congress had an effect. We conclude that presidential campaign visits significantly enhance candidates' electoral prospects.

The VA Health System: A National Alternative?

In 2007, as in 1993, acknowledging the need for reforming U.S. medical care resembles breathing: No one can escape it. But now, as one or two or three decades before, the obvious question is not whether problems exist, but whether there is a politically acceptable, administratively workable, and economically affordable policy at hand. Phillip Longman’s book, with the foreword by his journalistic sidekick Timothy Noah, claims to have an answer, if not the answer. It is the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) arrangements, through the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), for the financing, organizing, and delivering of medical care to its clientele. Longman first outlined this bold, unexpected argument in a 2005 Washington Monthly article with the same title as his book: “Best Care Anywhere.” “Ten years ago,” he then claimed, “veterans hospitals were dangerous, dirty, and scandal ridden. ...Now they’re producing the highest quality care in the country. Their turnaround points the way towards solv ing America’s healthcare cr isis .” Longman’s book indisputably documents the amazing improvement in the reality and imagery of the VA medical system. The book elaborates two separable themes. First, it is a fascinating case study of organizational change, the transformation noted above in the operation of the VA’s nationwide medical care system. As such, it shows what is organizationally possible when leaders have both workable reform ideas and the levers of power to put them into practice. In that sense, Longman’s work is a tribute to both the leaders and staff of the VA reform—Ken Kizer most prominently—and the VA’s various constituents in Congress and interest groups for permitting this transformation to take place. Second, he claims, the VA presents a model for U.S. medical care reform. But that is quite another, controversial matter. The central claims of the reform story are easy to state. With the help of electronic medical records across the VA system nationwide, it has been possible to greatly improve the quality of care. Whether the VA is better at that task than, say, Kaiser Permanente, will no doubt generate dispute in the medical journals. But that it does a better job than the disjoined care most Americans receive is not only plausible, but highly likely. Not only is the quality comparatively high, but the cost of the care given is modest by comparison with the rest of U.S. medicine. This is especially true for prescription drugs, where the VA uses its market muscle to purchase the products of Big Pharma at prices Medicare’s congressional masters would be delirious to pay. And, in addition, eligible veterans face medical ailments without a glimmer of financial fear, with a range of benefits (and trivial cost sharing) that makes the rest of U.S. health insurance seem terribly restrictive. Yet the obvious question is whether this remarkable reform story has all that much to offer our national debate over what to do about the cost, quality, and organizational complexity of medical care. Here one should acknowledge the moral zeal and the emotional intensity of the message Longman (and Noah) send. B o o k R e v i e w s

Jay Cooke's Gamble: The Northern Pacific Railroad, the Sioux, and the Panic of 1873

In 1869, Jay Cooke, the brilliant but idiosyncratic American banker, decided to finance the Northern Pacific, a transcontinental railroad planned from Duluth, Minnesota, to Seattle. M. John Lubetkin tells how Cooke's gamble reignited war with the Sioux, rescued George Armstrong Custer from obscurity, created Yellowstone Park, pushed frontier settlement four hundred miles westward, and triggered the Panic of 1873. Staking his reputation and wealth on the Northern Pacific, Cooke was soon whipsawed by the railroad's mismanagement, questionable contracts, and construction problems. Financier J. P. Morgan undermined him, and the Credit Mobilier scandal ended congressional support. When railroad surveyors and army escorts ignored Sioux chief Sitting Bull's warning not to enter the Yellowstone Valley, Indian attacks - combined with alcoholic commanders - led to embarrassing setbacks on the field, in the nation's press, and among investors. Lubetkin's suspenseful narrative describes events played out from Wall Street to the Yellowstone and vividly portrays the soldiers, engineers, businessmen, politicians, and Native Americans who tried to build or block the Northern Pacific.

Human Systems Integration in Education and Training: A Grassroots Effort to Obtain Total Systems Performance at an Affordable Cost

AbstractHuman systems integration (HSI) requires highly qualified practitioners who can effectively and affordably integrate human capabilities into new and existing weapons systems. Over the past few years, Congressional support of National Defense Act (HR1522) for HSI continues as evident by this statement, “The committee recognizes HSI initiatives as a means for reducing total ownership costs of weapons programs, and continues to support efforts to more formally consider HSI issues earlier in the acquisition cycle.” To do so, organizations must focus attention within the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (CJCSI 3170.01) and the Department of Defense (DoD) acquisition framework (DoDI 5000.2) processes. More specifically, HSI practitioners center attention on total system performance by integrating trade‐offs within and across the HSI domains of manpower, personnel, training, human factors engineering, environment, safety, occupational health, survivability, and habitability. By conducting system‐level integration from concept inception to operational employment to eventual disposal, HSI practitioners can enable optimized total systems performance and reduce life‐cycle costs. Because very few qualified HSI practitioners are available and/or affordable, three critical ingredients need to be addressed: (1) greater demand for HSI as a result of better HSI requirements, (2) senior leadership and organizational motivation of subject matter experts to become HSI practitioners, and (3) availability of comprehensive education and training programs across the spectrum for new personnel to become HSI practitioners and existing practitioners to maintain proficiency and currency with changing technology. Education and training opportunities need to be cohesive and coherent across the spectrum of learning: initial qualification, continuing education, professional development, advanced credentials, and ultimately professional certification. These opportunities should be sufficient to create a near‐term DoD and industry certification standard and process that will support the growing demand for HSI in DoD systems acquisition and the industries that support the process.

The D&amp;T Report

The D&amp;T Report

TAX BREAK Chemical makers call on Congress to restore federal R&amp;D tax credit

Chemical manufacturers and other U.S. businesses are urging Congress to pass legislation before the end of the year to restore and expand the federal research and development tax which expired at the end of 2005. ACC strongly supports bipartisan efforts in Congress to extend and strengthen the R&D tax credit, says American Chemistry Council President Jack N. Gerard. An expired [credit] will impose financial consequences for American chemistry and may jeopardize research projects that are essential to the American economy. The 20% credit would again be available for certain R&D expenditures made only in the U.S., primarily spending on employees who perform qualified research activities. Originally enacted in 1981, the R&D tax credit has been extended 11 times by Congress. Nearly 16,000 companies have used the credit. The provision has wide support in Congress. But the tax break failed to advance before the elections when it was included in a controversial measure to ...