The embattled Internal Revenue Service faces a 24 percent cut to its budget next year, under a spending plan introduced by the House Appropriations Committee Tuesday. The IRS funding was included in the committee's Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill, which also includes funding for the Treasury Department, the General Services Administration and the Executive Office of the President. The subcommittee is set to mark up the proposal Wednesday.
Pentagon says it will use its limited budget flexibility to compensate for unexpected war costs, not to blunt sequestration. Services continue to warn Congress about how budget cuts are impacting readiness.
The Pentagon delays its RFP for a new electronic health record system. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says a revised approach is coming soon.
With the release of the White House's 2014 budget proposal last week, budget season on Capitol Hill is in full swing. But while Congress will be debating the merits of the President's budget plan via a flurry of congressional hearings this week, the permanent director's chair at the Office of Management and Budget remains vacant.
For the third year in a row, Congress is unlikely to give GSA enough money to repair and maintain federal buildings. Acting GSA Administrator Dan Tangherlini told House lawmakers Tuesday that the government isn't spending the 2-to-4 percent industry average to keep buildings operating well.
Congressman Frank Wolf, whose subcommittee handles NASA's budget, said whistleblowers have reported a foreign national connected to an 'entity of concern' was allowed to exfiltrate sensitive data to China. The FBI is investigating the allegations.
The fiscal 2013 spending bill doesn't remove the requirement for the Postal Service to deliver first-class mail six days a week. Other provisions in the bill povide a boost in funding DHS cyber, DoD acquisition and VA IT spending.
The lower chamber's bill would significantly soften the blow against DoD and potentially eliminate current plans such as civilian furloughs because of the automatic budget cuts. The remainder of the government would remain under both sequestration and a full-year continuing resolution.
House Republicans unveiled a stopgap government funding measure Monday. The measure would extend the federal pay freeze and leave in place automatic sequestration cuts but would award the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments their detailed 2013 budgets while other agencies would be frozen at 2012 levels -- and then bear the across-the-board cuts. The current continuing resolution expires March 27.
The automatic budget cuts set to occur under sequestration will go into effect as a matter of law on Friday. But their full impact won't be felt until late this spring, long after lawmakers encounter the next budget showdown.
President Barack Obama signed a continuing resolution Friday to fund government operations through March 27, 2013. The legislation represents a 0.6 percent across-the-board increase above fiscal 2012 levels. It also extends the federal pay freeze.
The White House has threatened to veto two key House spending bills because of severe spending cuts at some agencies as well as federal pay and workforce provisions. In statements of administration policy, the Office of Management and Budget said appropriations bills for both Financial Services and General Government and the Defense Department stray from previously agreed to budgetary caps
Congress has made quick work, so far, of the 12 annual bills setting agency spending for fiscal 2013. Over the past few months, the House Appropriations Committee has approved 10 of the bills, and the full House has OK'd five of them. The full Senate has approved no appropriations bill so far this year, however the committee has reported out eight bills.
The Financial Services and General Government spending bill seeks to cut $2 billion from the president's request. The bill says nothing about granting feds a pay raise in 2013. The House committee follows the lead of Senate appropriators, which also remained silent on the issue.
The White House has threatened to veto a House bill providing funding for the Homeland Security Department, taking issue with many of the bill's provisions, including a denial of a civilian pay raise. The committee bill also doesn't include any new funding for the agency's data-center consolidation efforts or construction for its new headquarters.