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State Techniques to Blunt the Governor's Item-Veto Power

Description: The Line Item Veto Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-130) authorizes the President to cancel discretionary budget authority, new entitlements, and limited tax benefits. This authority became available on January 1, 1997; will Congress now resort to a variety of techniques and strategies to circumscribe the President's power? Legislators and legislative committees at the state level have used various tactics to counteract, blunt, or neutralize the governor's item-veto power.
Date: December 12, 1996
Creator: Fisher, Louis
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Electricity Restructuring Background: Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 (PUHCA)

Description: This report provides background information on PUHCA, including its history and impact. It also discusses how PUHCA reform fits into the current electric utility industry restructuring debate. This report will be updated as events warrant. For related information on electricity restructuring, see the CRS Electronic Briefing Book.
Date: January 7, 1999
Creator: Abel, Amy
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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English as the Official Language of the United States: An Overview

Description: This report provides background on contemporary efforts to declare English the official language, a review of selected issues raised by official English proposals in Congress, and a summary of arguments that have been advanced in favor of and in opposition to such proposals.
Date: April 1, 1997
Creator: Aleman, Steven R.; Bruno, Andorra & Dale, Charles V.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy

Description: Preventing the acquisition of nuclear weapons is a longstanding goal of U.S. national security policy. Five countries are recognized as having legal status as nuclear weapons states: United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, and France. All five signed the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which recognizes only these five that tested nuclear weapons before 1968 as de jure nuclear weapons states. Three more: India, Israel, and Pakistan, have significant nuclear capabilities, but are not members… more
Date: August 3, 2000
Creator: Behrens, Carl E.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Africa's Great Lakes Region: Current Conditions in Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda

Description: Africa's Great Lakes region is slowly becoming more stable after almost a decade of conflicts. The region remains vulnerable, however, since armed rebel groups are active in eastern Congo, Burundi, Rwanda and northern Uganda. This report discusses conflicts in these areas in detail, as well as U.S.-led efforts to reach peaceful resolutions.
Date: October 28, 2003
Creator: Dagne, Theodore S. & Farrell, Maureen
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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The Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative: An Overview

Description: The Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative (BMENA) is a multilateral development and reform plan aimed at fostering economic and political liberalization in a wide geographic area of Arab and non-Arab Muslim countries. In December 2004, the first BMENA meeting took place in Rabat, Morocco and was called the “Forum for the Future.”At the forum, foreign ministers and finance ministers of the countries in the region stretching from Morocco to Pakistan as well as from the countries of the … more
Date: February 15, 2005
Creator: Sharp, Jeremy M.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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July 1992 Japanese Elections

Description: Elections for half of the 252 seats of the upper house of Japan's Diet (parliament) will be held in late July 1992. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) appears unlikely to regain the majority it lost in the previous upper house election in July 1989. It appears that continued, but sometimes difficult, cooperation between the LDP and some of the smaller opposition parties is one likely result of the 1992 election. On the other hand, there is a possibility that significant political … more
Date: June 5, 1992
Creator: Young, Jeffrey D
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Renewable Energy: Tax Credit, Budget, and Electricity Restructuring Issues

Description: Energy security, a major driver of federal energy efficiency programs in the past, came back into play as oil and gas prices rose late in the year 2000. Also, the electricity shortages in California have brought a new emphasis to the role that renewable energy may play in electricity supply.
Date: March 9, 2001
Creator: Sissine, Fred
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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A Directory of Some Interest Groups and Governmental Organizations Concerned With National Environmental Policies

Description: This report briefly describes selected associations that have demonstrated strong and continuous interest in environmental protection policies of the United States. It provides background information on some of the active participants in national policy discussions. The set of organizations abstracted for this report is not comprehensive; many groups necessarily have been omitted, often because they failed to respond to our request for information. An attempt was made to balance divergent polit… more
Date: September 21, 1993
Creator: Schierow, Linda-Jo
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Environmental Reauthorizations and Regulatory Reform: From the 104th Congress to the 105th

Description: The 104th Congress pursued efforts to reform environmental regulations on several fronts: (1) revising regulatory decision making processes; (2) attaching specific reforms to funding bills; (3) establishing a House corrections day calendar of bills addressing specific regulatory problems; and (4) incorporating regulatory reforms into individual program reauthorization bills. The 105th Congress has pursued regulatory reform in four primary directions: (1) proposals to establish a comprehensive c… more
Date: February 10, 1998
Creator: Blodgett, John E.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Banking Acquisition and Merger Procedures

Description: This report discusses in general terms the basic process and time line for banking industry acquisitions and mergers and briefly discusses the May 4, 1998 application by Travelers Group to merge with Citicorp. Among the issues discussed are: potential impact on consumers; whether the new entities would be too big to fail; and, whether competitive equity calls for financial modernization legislation with functional regulation of the securities, banking, and insurance sectors of companies offerin… more
Date: May 19, 1998
Creator: Murphy, M. Maureen
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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The Russian Financial Crisis: An Analysis of Trends, Causes, and Implications

Description: Since May of 1998, Russia has been caught in the latest, and likely the most serious, in a series of economic crises. The crisis came to a head on August 17, 1998, when the government of then-Premier Sergei Kiriyenko abandoned its defense of a strong ruble exchange rate against the dollar, defaulted on government domestic debt forcing its restructuring, and placed a 90-day moratorium on commercial external debt payments. Those actions led to Yeltsin's dismissal of Kiriyenko on August 23, replac… more
Date: February 18, 1999
Creator: Cooper, William H.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Japanese Lobbying and U.S. Automobile Policy

Description: This report surveys U.S. automobile policy in the 1980s in order to clarify the effects of foreign lobbying. The conclusion is that the success of Japanese and other foreign lobbying on automobile policy has been mixed. Some decisions have gone their way; others have not. Their success is partly because they have aligned their efforts with those of powerful domestic interests.
Date: February 19, 1993
Creator: Nanto, Dick K.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Iraq: International Support for U.S. Policy

Description: Although there is a worldwide consensus that Iraq must comply with all applicable U.N. resolutions, international attitudes differ sharply on how to compel Iraq to comply with the U.N. program of eliminating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. Some countries support U.S. threats to use force against Iraq as a necessary step to ensure that Iraq does not reconstitute banned weapons programs. Other countries believe that force would kill Iraqi civilians already chafing under seven years o… more
Date: February 19, 1998
Creator: Katzman, Kenneth
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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