It is positive, and a clear step forward, that Serbian authorities like the Serbian Commissioner for Refguees have started programs to help IDPs leave collective centers, move to their own houses, and regain their livelihoods. Yet, as Walter Kälin points out in an address to the Parliament of Serbia, bureaucratic obstacles continue to make it unnecessarily difficult for many IDPs to access public services.
Testifying before the House Budget Committee, Alice Rivlin urged enforcement of the statutory pay-as-you-go budget rules to rein in the long-term deficit. She endorsed the recent actions taken to stimulate the economy and rescue the financial sector, but said the costly measures further obligate Congress and the administration to control deficits.
In testimony before Congress on June 17, senior fellow and CNAPS director Richard Bush described how North Korea’s recent nuclear and missile tests have transformed the challenge faced by the international system. Dr. Bush testified that it is now clear that North Korea bases its security on nuclear weapons, and the hope that it will abandon the nuclear option has disappeared.
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kenneth Lieberthal addressed the growing need for U.S.-China climate cooperation and how it is in the interest of both countries. Lieberthal testified that an important step is for the U.S. to have a realistic understanding of the reasons China's emissions are growing so rapidly, and he offered suggestions for the future of the relationship.
In testimony to the Senate Banking Committee, Martin Baily and Robert Litan discussed the "too big to fail" conundrum, saying large institutions are necessary but must be regulated in a way that at least partially offsets the risks they pose to the rest of the financial system. They also say Congress needs to provide more Treasury TARP funds, maybe on a large scale, but that such a move will ultimately cost less than bank nationalization.
In testimony before the Senate Finance Committee's Roundtable on Health Care Reform, Mark McClellan discussed how reform efforts are increasingly concerned with changing how health care is delivered, and how the Accountable Care Organization model could help without creating significant changes in existing payments or substantial new financial risks.
Testifying before the Council of the District of Columbia, Martha Ross called for renewed attention to programs connecting young people to job training and the labor market, urging attention to program quality rather than just numbers served.
Before a special session of the Senate Banking Committee, Robert Puentes discussed the coordination of transportation and housing policy and its role in developing livable communities. Among others things, he stressed the need for the federal government to assist states and metropolitan areas in one of their hardest tasks: transcending the stovepiping of disparate programs that remains a serious cause of undesirable development outcomes.