COMMONLY UNKNOWN ACRONYMS

AID -- The Agency for International Development
CIBERS -- Centers for International Business Education and Research
EELIAS -- Evaluation of Exchange, Language International Area Studies
ERIC/CLL -- Educational Resources Information Center/ Center for Languages and Linguistics
ESEA -- Elementary and Secondary Education Act
FILR -- Federal Interagency Language Roundtable
FIPSE -- Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education
FLES -- Foreign Language for Elementary Schools
FLAP -- Foreign Language Assistance Program
FLIP -- Foreign Language Incentive Program
FLAS -- Foreign Language and Area Studies
GPRA -- Government Performance and Results Act
HEA -- Higher Education Act
IIPP -- Institute for International Public Policy
LCTLs -- Less Commonly Taught Languages
LEA -- Local Education Agency
LEP -- Limited English Proficient
LRC -- Language Resource Center
NAEP -- National Assessment of Educational Progress
NED -- National Endowment for Democracy
NEH -- National Endowment for the Humanities
NRC -- National Resource Center
NSEP -- National Security Education Program
OBEMLA -- Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs
OERI -- Office of Educational Research and Improvement
SEA -- State Education Agency
USED -- United States Education Department
USIP -- United States Institute for Peace
UISFL -- Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Languages

 

THE LANGUAGE OF CONGRESS

Advice and Consent
The Senate's constitutional role in consenting to or rejecting the president's nominations to the executive branch and judicial offices and the treaties he submits. Confirmation of nominees requires a simple majority vote of the full Senate. Treaties must be approved by a two-thirds majority of senators present and voting.

Administrative Assistant (AA)
The title usually given to a member's chief aide, political advisor, and head of office staff.

Appropriation
Legislative language that permits a federal agency to incur obligations and make payment from the Treasury for specified purposes, usually during a specified period of time, like a fiscal year. The specific amount of money made available by such language.

Authorization
A statutory provision that establishes or continues a federal agency, activity, or program for a fixed or indefinite period of time. It may also establish policies and restrictions and deal with organizational and administrative matters.

Authorizations for specific amounts are construed as ceilings on the amounts that subsequently may be appropriated in an appropriation bill, but not as minimums; either house may appropriate lesser amounts or nothing at all.

Bill
The term for the chief vehicle Congress uses for enacting law. Bills that originate in the House of Representatives are designated as H.R., those in the Senate as S., followed by a number assigned in the order in which they are introduced during a two-year Congress.

Conferees
A common title for managers, the members from each house appointed to a conference committee.

Conference
A formal meeting or a series of meetings between members representing each house to reconcile House and Senate differences on a measure. Also known as a conference committee.

Conference Report
A document submitted to both houses that contain a conference committee's agreements for resolving their differences.

Hearing
Committee or subcommittee meetings to receive testimony on proposed legislation during investigations or for oversight purposes. Relatively few bills are important enough to justify formal hearings.

Legislative Assistant (LA)
A member's staff person responsible for monitoring and preparing legislation on particular subjects and for advising the members on them.

Legislative Correspondent (LC)
A member's staff person responsible for reading and answering constituent mail.

Legislative Director (LD)
A member's staff person responsible for all legislative activities in the office.

Markup
A meeting or a series of meetings by a committee or subcommittee during which members "mark up" a measure by offering, debating, and voting on amendments to it.

Public Law
A public bill or joint resolution enacted into law. It is cited by the letters P.L. followed by a hyphenated number. The digits before the hyphen indicate the number of the Congress in which it was enacted; the digits after the hyphen indicate its position in the numerical sequence of public measures that became law during that Congress.

Rescission
A provision of law that repeals previous enacted budget authority in whole or in part.

Veto
The president's disapproval of a legislative measure passed by Congress. He returns the measure to the house in which it originated without his signature but with a veto message stating his objections to it. When Congress is in session, the president must veto a bill within ten days, excluding Sundays, after he has received it or it becomes a law without signature.


From CQ's Pocket Guide to the Language of Congress. (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1994) .

E-mail: info@languagepolicy.org