Hubbard Radio Washington DC, LLC. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
The White House, Congress and the Department of Justice laid out to-do lists to address problems plaguing the Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as legislation to provide veterans with resources for education, economic opportunities, health care and to end homelessness.
The Veterans Health Administration’s struggle to recover from a scandal that exposed problems in patient care and scheduling can be felt in every corner of the organization. Since becoming the head of the Veterans Health Administration in July, David Shulkin has led weekly meetings with the agency’s top leaders. He recalls what happened at the first meeting to Federal News Radio’s Emily Kopp.
It's been around since the Civil War to protect the government from fraud. The False Claims Act has one of the strongest whistleblower protection provisions under federal law. Relators can receive up to 30 percent if the case is won. In fiscal 2014, the Department of Justice recovered a record sum of nearly $6 billion from false claims cases. Peter Hutt, a partner at the law firm Akin Gump, joins the Federal Drive with Tom Temin with more.
A group of lawmakers are backing legislation to make it easier for veterans to get approved for business contracts under the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA is also in the midst of taking public comment on proposed changes to its verification guidelines.
Congress came out swinging last week, with some lawmakers calling on the IRS chief's impeachment, while House Republicans passed a bill that would give private debt collectors some of the responsibilities currently held by the tax agency. Report cards were also issued from Capitol Hill, and there was a lot of red.
Each sector of the economy must deal with its own particular cybersecurity challenges. And each has a federal agency counterpart. The Energy Department spends a lot of, well, energy examining and analyzing threats to the nation's sources of energy and the grid that delivers it. Much of that work falls under the purview of Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood Randall, the deputy energy secretary.
There are at least two schools of thought about repeated congressional efforts to privatize the IRS, says Senior Correspondent Mike Causey. The government could save a lot of money if it could get rid of 90,000 IRS workers and let the private sector do it, for a fee, or squeeze it enough so it falls further behind in collections, and complete the self-fulfilling prophecy.
Bob Tobias, a Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at American University, counts down the week's top federal stories with Francis Rose.
Civil servants who refuse to answer questions when called to testify before the House of Representatives or the Senate are not exercising civil service protections. They are exercising a constitutional right guaranteed to everyone, says Jeff Neal, senior vice president of ICF International.
The Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency is urging lawmakers to pass legislation restoring access to records and information for federal inspectors general.
The measure would preserve VA employees' rights to appeal disciplinary decisions, while shortening the appeals process. VA leaders says they do not need another law, while the White House has threatened to veto the bill out of concern for employees' due process rights.
How a bill becomes a law is a subject we all learned once, maybe from teachers or Schoolhouse Rock. Missing from that lesson was the role that federal agencies play. Chris Walker is a law professor at the Ohio State University. He has written a report to the Administrative Conference of the United States on the subject. He joins the Federal Drive with Tom Temin via Skype with more.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act scorecard and the governmentwide average is a “D.” Lawmakers and OMB expect agency scores to improve across the four metrics.
VA's Veterans First contracting program is making progress since a critical 2013 accountability report, but lawmakers say the agency could be doing more.