Congress

  • Hardship withdrawals shot up in the first few weeks of October and thousands more employees opted to shift their investments out of higher-risk areas and into the G Fund, TSP officials said at at the board's monthly meeting Monday. During the shutdown, some 8,200 participants requested hardship withdrawals, compared to 5,500 during the same period of time last year.

    October 28, 2013
  • A new Government Accountability Office report says greater transparency in the way the General Services Administration handles its high-value leases would lead to better decision making and generate more cost savings.

    October 25, 2013
  • Virtually every one of DoD's acquisition programs took a hit from sequestration in the first year of sequestration, officials from each of the military services told lawmakers this week. But the next few years of the 10-year spending restrictions could be much more painful, especially if Congress doesn't return to the process of enacting regular appropriations bills.

    October 25, 2013
  • On this week's Capital Impact show, Bloomberg Government analysts will examine the impact of the 340B Drug program on so-called "safety-net" hospitals, and how the government shutdown has affected the economy. October 24, 2013

    October 24, 2013
  • Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) introduced a bill that would open up the federal health program to all Americans, but one federal employee union has come out to oppose it and benefits experts question how much it would cost.

    October 24, 2013
  • The House Energy and Commerce Committee called representatives from four contractors — including prime contractor CGI Federal — to the committee to investigate the bumpy launch of the health care website. Contractors responsible for key parts of the website told lawmakers that the federal government was responsible for comprehensively testing the site and that a late decision to require logging into the system before browsing for insurance plans created bottlenecks that crippled the site.

    October 24, 2013
  • Key politicians from both parties have said never again will there be a government shutdown like the farce of 2013, Senior Correspondent Mike Causey reports. So if it is safe to write the shutdown's obituary, where would you start?

    October 24, 2013
  • Financial planner Arthur Stein will discuss what you can do to protect your assets in the event of another government shutdown, and Sean Reilly will talk about the possibility of another shutdown, and what's ahead for feds. October 23, 2013

    October 23, 2013
  • The chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee sent letters to Verizon Enterprise Inc., Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Expedia asking if they are part of the administration's "tech surge" to fix the Affordable Care Act portal.

    October 23, 2013
  • Top politicians have vowed there will be no more shutdowns. But they've said that before, including as recently as this month, Senior Correspondent Mike Causey says. So what can you do if there's a repeat performance?

    October 23, 2013
  • Army officials say the service is facing uncertainty times after weathering a series of continuing resolutions, sequestration and a partial government shutdown. Meanwhile, a new round of automatic budget cuts may be on the horizon if Congress doesn't pass a new budget come January.

    October 22, 2013
  • Eighty-three percent of respondents to a Federal News Radio online poll said morale at their workplace is now worse than before the shutdown. Another 5 percent of respondents said they didn't feel personally affected but the morale of their co-workers had worsened. Federal workforce experts and employees, themselves, say the the two-week government shutdown has opened up a rift of resentment between groups of federal employees which, in part, is fueling the morale drain.

    October 22, 2013
  • In a letter to federal CIO Steve VanRoekel and federal CTO Todd Park, Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairmen want documents and information on whether the program went under a TechStat review and whether the White House made decisions that impacted the use of federal IT best practices.

    October 22, 2013
  • Whatever the political purpose of the shutdown, it apparently didn't work. It amounted to a 16-day paid vacation for a lot of federal workers and lost income for lots of people, Senior Correspondent Mike Causey says. So what did you do?

    October 22, 2013