Barbara Mikulski

The budget request comes as the General Services Administration announces Phase II for the FBI headquarters project.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch testified before the Senate appropriations subcommittee on the plan to expand the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, the hiring of 200 special agents and investigators for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, as well as the investment in the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network and National Firearms Act applications.

After many, many days of closed-door negotiations, we finally have an agreement on the 2016 budget. The deal heads to the floor today, and if it passes, it means no more continuing resolutions for the remainder of 2016 and some certainty on the pay and benefits front for federal employees. Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) is the senior democrat on the Senate appropriations committee and had a key role in negotiating the final deal. She talked with Jared Serbu on Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

The omnibus spending bill includes money for the FBI’s new headquarters, 10 years of credit monitoring services for OPM breach victims and much more for federal employees.

Section 209 of the Senate’s Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act would give DHS emergency powers during a cyber attack on federal or contractor networks holding federal data. Some say the provision is too vague.

A new Senate bill could guarantee six weeks of paid leave for federal employees who become parents, and let them choose whether to take those six weeks separately or in one shot.

Despite overwhelming agreement that cybersecurity legislation is needed, Senate lawmakers couldn’t agree on how such a bill would look. Lawmakers did approve the nomination of Denise Turner Roth to be GSA administrator.

UPDATED: Congressman Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) joins a growing list of Washington-area lawmakers who are looking at whether Congress could pay for the costs from the OPM breach under emergency appropriations.

A bipartisan group of six senators introduced the Federal Information Security Management Reform Act of 2015 to give DHS the clout it’s been lacking over the last five years and, in some respects, put it on par with the National Security Agency.