Unfunded Mandates Reform Act: History, Impact, and Issues

[Excerpt] The Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (UMRA) established requirements for enacting certain legislation and issuing certain regulations that would impose enforceable duties on state, local, or tribal governments or on the private sector. UMRA refers to obligations imposed by such legislation and regulations as “mandates” (either “intergovernmental” or “private sector,” depending on the entities affected). The direct cost to affected entities of meeting these obligations are referred to as “mandate costs,” and when the federal government does not provide funding to cover these costs, the mandate is termed “unfunded.” UMRA incorporates numerous definitions, exclusions, and exceptions that specify what forms and types of mandates are subject to its requirements, termed “covered mandates.” Covered mandates do not include many federal actions with potentially significant financial impacts on nonfederal entities. This report’s primary purpose is to describe the kinds of legislative and regulatory provisions that are subject to UMRA’s requirements, and, on this basis, to assess UMRA’s impact on federal mandates. The report also examines debates that occurred, both before and since UMRA’s enactment, concerning what kinds of provisions UMRA ought to cover, and considers the implications of experience under UMRA for possible future revisions of its scope of coverage. This report also describes the requirements UMRA imposes on congressional and agency actions to establish covered mandates. For most legislation and regulations covered by UMRA, these requirements are only informational. For reported legislation that would impose covered mandates on the intergovernmental or private sectors, UMRA requires the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to provide an estimate of mandate costs. Similarly, for regulations that would impose covered mandates on the intergovernmental or private sectors, UMRA requires that the issuing agency provide an estimate of mandate costs (although the specifics of the estimates required for legislation and for regulations differ somewhat). Also, solely for legislation that would impose covered intergovernmental mandates, UMRA establishes a point of order in each house of Congress through which the chamber can decline to consider the legislation. This report examines UMRA’s implementation, focusing on the respective requirements for mandate cost estimates on legislation and regulations, and on the point of order procedure for legislation proposing unfunded intergovernmental mandates

Gap Domain Wall Fermions

I demonstrate that the chiral properties of Domain Wall Fermions (DWF) in the large to intermediate lattice spacing regime of QCD, 1 to 2 GeV, are significantly improved by adding to the action two standard Wilson fermions with supercritical mass equal to the negative DWF five dimensional mass. Using quenched DWF simulations I show that the eigenvalue spectrum of the transfer matrix Hamiltonian develops a substantial gap and that the residual mass decreases appreciatively. Furthermore, I confirm that topology changing remains active and that the hadron spectrum of the added Wilson fermions is above the lattice cutoff and therefore is irrelevant. I argue that this result should also hold for dynamical DWF and furthermore that it should improve the chiral properties of related fermion methods.Comment: 12 pages of text, 14 figures, added sect.6 on topology and reference

Chiral Symmetry Restoration in the Schwinger Model with Domain Wall Fermions

Domain Wall Fermions utilize an extra space time dimension to provide a method for restoring the regularization induced chiral symmetry breaking in lattice vector gauge theories even at finite lattice spacing. The breaking is restored at an exponential rate as the size of the extra dimension increases. Before this method can be used in dynamical simulations of lattice QCD, the dependence of the restoration rate to the other parameters of the theory and, in particular, the lattice spacing must be investigated. In this paper such an investigation is carried out in the context of the two flavor lattice Schwinger model.Comment: LaTeX, 37 pages including 18 figures. Added comments regarding power law fitting in sect 7. Also, few changes were made to elucidate the content in sect. 5.1 and 5.3. To appear in Phys. Rev.

Unfunded Mandates Reform Act: History, Impact, and Issues

This report examines debates over what constitutes an unfunded federal mandate and the implementation of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (UMRA). It includes an overview of UMRA, its origins, and provisions; definitions for unfunded federal mandates; how UMRA relates to Congressional procedure (Title I) and to federal rulemaking (Title II); and concluding observations on the issues

Unfunded Mandates Reform Act: History, Impact, and Issues

Report that examines debates over what constitutes an unfunded federal mandate and the implementation of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) of 1995

Unfunded Mandates Reform Act: History, Impact, and Issues

This report examines debates over what constitutes an unfunded federal mandate and the implementation of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (UMRA). It includes an overview of UMRA, its origins, and provisions; definitions for unfunded federal mandates; how UMRA relates to Congressional procedure (Title I) and to federal rulemaking (Title II); and concluding observations on the issues

Unfunded Mandates Reform Act: History, Impact, and Issues

This report examines debates over what constitutes an unfunded federal mandate and UMRA's implementation. It focuses on UMRA's requirement that CBO issue written cost estimate statements for federal mandates in legislation, its procedures for raising points of order in the House and Senate concerning unfunded federal mandates in legislation, and its requirement that federal agencies prepare written cost estimate statements for federal mandates in rules. It also assesses UMRA's impact on federal mandates and arguments concerning UMRA's future, focusing on UMRA's definitions, exclusions, and exceptions which currently exempt many federal actions with potentially significant financial impacts on nonfederal entities

Einfluss der Substrattemperatur auf die Haftung schmelzgeschichteter Prüfkörper aus thermoplastischem Polyurethan auf aminosilanen Haftvermittlerschichten

Aufgrund ihrer Eigenschaft, der Lokalisation mechanischer Spannungen – im Gegensatz zu mechanischen Fügetechniken – entgegenzuwirken, gewinnen stoffschlüssige Fügetechniken auch im Bereich des Fügens an spröden Komponenten im Bereich des Sanitärbaus, der Herstellung von Gebrauchsporzellan oder in der Displaytechnik immer mehr an Bedeutung. Besonders erstrebenswert ist in diesem Zusammenhang eine Kombination aus sehr harten und spröden Stoffeigenschaften einer Glasoberfläche oder einer glasierten Oberfläche mit den weich-elastischen Eigenschaften eines thermoplastischen Elastomers. Prinzipiell lassen sich derartige Verbunde durch das direkte Anspritzen an die anorganische Komponente etwa in einem Spritzguss- oder in einem nachdruckfreien Spritzprägeprozess erreichen. Aufgrund der Notwendigkeit einer Form mit entsprechend enger Fertigungstoleranz und den daraus resultierenden hohen Werkzeugkosten erscheinen drucklose Schmelzschichtverfahren, bei denen eine extrudierte thermoplastische Schmelze direkt auf dem Substrat aufgetragen wird, als Fertigungsverfahren zielführend. Sie eröffnen zudem durch eine hohe Gestaltungsfreiheit der angedruckten Komponente innovative Fertigungs-möglichkeiten für hybride Prototypen und neue Reparaturtechnologien. Für den drucklosen Prozess der Materialextrusion auf einer mit einem Aminosilan versehenen anorganischen Oberfläche ist vor allem die Oberflächentemperatur entscheidend. Erst bei hinreichend hoher Temperatur – ähnlich wie beim Heißkleben – kann eine ausreichend starke Molekülbewegung für die mechanische Adhäsion und zusätzlich beim Einsatz von Aminosilanen vermehrt Interaktion mit den funktionellen Gruppen des Haftvermittlers erreicht werden. Weiterhin ist die thermische Zersetzung der primären und sekundären Amine in höheren Temperaturbereichen bei einer Bewertung des Druckprozesses zu berücksichtigen. Für eine Betrachtung des Einflusses der Oberflächentemperatur während des Schmelzschichtvorgangs und eine Bewertung der resultierenden Haftung wurden emaillierte Stahlproben zunächst mit einer amorphen SiO2-Beschichtung versehen und im Folgenden mit einem Aminosilan nasschemisch beschichtet. Im Nachgang wurden diese Oberflächen bei unterschiedlichen Druckbetttemperaturen Prüfkörper aus thermoplastischem Polyurethan mittels fused layer manufacturing (FLM) gedruckt. Abschließend erfolgte eine mechanische Charakterisierung der Verbindungsfestigkeit in einem Kopfzugversuch