The Small Business Administration (SBA) administers several programs to support small businesses, including loan guaranty programs designed to encourage lenders to provide loans to small businesses "that might not otherwise obtain financing on reasonable terms and conditions." The SBA's 7(a) loan guaranty program is considered the agency's flagship loan program. Its name is derived from Section 7(a) of the Small Business Act of 1953 (P.L. 83-163, as amended), which authorizes the SBA to provide business loans and loan guaranties to American small businesses. In FY2014, the SBA approved 52,044...

The Navy's proposed FY2015 budget requests $1,219.3 million for continued research and development work on the Ohio replacement program (ORP), a program to design and build a new class of 12 ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) to replace the Navy's current force of 14 Ohio-class SSBNs. The Ohio replacement program is also known as the SSBN(X) program. The Navy has identified the Ohio replacement program as its top priority program. Under the Navy's FY2012 budget, the first Ohio replacement boat was scheduled to be procured in FY2019, and Ohio replacement boats were to enter service on a...

The Small Business Administration's (SBA's) Microloan program provides direct loans to qualified nonprofit intermediary lenders who, in turn, provide "microloans" of up to $50,000 to small business owners, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit child care centers. It also provides marketing, management, and technical assistance to microloan borrowers and potential borrowers. The program was authorized in 1991 as a five-year demonstration project and became operational in 1992. It was made permanent, subject to reauthorization, in 1997. The SBA's Microloan program is designed to assist women,...

The principal federal program to aid municipal wastewater treatment plant construction is authorized in the Clean Water Act (CWA). Established as a grant program in 1972, it now capitalizes state loan programs. Authorizations since 1972 have totaled $65 billion, while appropriations have totaled nearly $90 billion. It has represented 25%-30% of total funds appropriated to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in recent years. In appropriations legislation, funding for EPA wastewater assistance is contained in the measure providing funds for the Department of the Interior, Environment, and...

The uprising against Bahrain's Al Khalifa royal family that began on February 14, 2011, has not achieved the goals of the mostly Shiite opposition to establish a constitutional monarchy. Demonstrations have become smaller and less frequent since 2012, but the opposition's boycotts of elections and its denunciations of arrests of dissidents have foiled government assertions that the political situation has returned to "normal." The government and opposition have attempted to resolve the unrest through two "national dialogues" (July 2011 and February to December 2013), but neither reached a...

Much progress has been made in achieving the ambitious goals that Congress established 40 years ago in the Clean Water Act (CWA) to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's waters. However, long-standing problems persist, and new problems have emerged. Water quality problems are diverse, ranging from pollution runoff from farms and ranches, city streets, and other diffuse or "nonpoint" sources, to toxic substances discharged from factories and sewage treatment plants. There is little agreement among stakeholders about what solutions are needed and...

China's actions for asserting and defending its maritime territorial and exclusive economic zone (EEZ) claims in the East China (ECS) and South China Sea (SCS), particularly since late 2013, have heightened concerns among observers that ongoing disputes over these waters and some of the islands within them could lead to a crisis or conflict between China and a neighboring country such as Japan, the Philippines, or Vietnam, and that the United States could be drawn into such a crisis or conflict as a result of obligations the United States has under bilateral security treaties with Japan and...

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was established in early 2003, bringing together existing parts of 22 different federal agencies and departments in a new framework of operations. In its first few years, the department was reorganized multiple times, and more focus was given to ensuring its components were addressing the perceived threats facing the country rather than to addressing the new organization's management structure and headquarters needs. Therefore, the consolidation of physical infrastructure that one might expect in creating an operation of such size and breadth did not...

Several federal agencies, including the Small Business Administration (SBA), provide training and other assistance to veterans seeking civilian employment. For example, the Department of Defense, in cooperation with the Department of Labor, Department of Veterans Affairs, and several other federal agencies, including the SBA, operates the Transition Goals Plans Success program (Transition GPS), which provides employment information and entrepreneurship training to exiting military servicemembers to assist them in transitioning from the military to the civilian labor force. In recent years,...

The Coast Guard's program of record (POR) calls for procuring 8 National Security Cutters (NSCs), 25 Offshore Patrol Cutters (OPCs), and 58 Fast Response Cutters (FRCs) as replacements for 90 aging Coast Guard cutters and patrol craft. The NSC, OPC, and FRC programs have a combined estimated acquisition cost of about $21.1 billion, and the Coast Guard's proposed FY2015 budget requests a total of $768 million in acquisition funding for the three programs. NSCs are the Coast Guard's largest and most capable general-purpose cutters. They have an estimated average procurement cost of about $684...