Agents charged Bo Jiang, a contractor at the National Institute of Aerospace, with lying to federal investigators. Jiang was under investigation for possible violations of the Arms Control Act.
Real reform for the U.S. Postal Service may be gaining some steam in Congress. Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas), the new chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees the Postal Service, tells Federal News Radio, House leadership sees room for compromise with Democrats when it comes to figuring out ways to get USPS back in the black. Farenthold supports the Postal Service's plan to eliminate Saturday mail delivery.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) asked auditors to review five different areas of sequestration. The Government Accountability Office will examine the actual sequestration order, as well as the July 31 memo to agencies from the Office of Management and Budget. He also wants GAO to look at any supporting reports, regulations and orders for compliance with the Budget Control Act, the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act, and other relevant statutes.
When it comes to the federal workforce, the competing House and Senate budget plans differ greatly in tone and style. But when it comes to making the federal government run more efficiently and finding cost-savings in federal operations, the two plans are more alike than you might think.
Congress missed the deadline to avert sequestration last week. And now a deadline to prevent a government shutdown at the end of the month is barreling toward lawmakers. But members of both chambers and from both sides of the aisle say they're confident they can work out a deal to keep the government running.The likely sticking point is how the the automatic budget cuts, known as sequestration, will continue to play out. House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Sen. Tom Coburn (R- Okla.) discuss the continuing resolution and sequestration on In Depth with Francis Rose.
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 House has approved legislation to prevent a government shutdown at the end of the month, freeze federal pay for a third straight year and give the Defense Department some relief from a cash crunch caused by sequestration. The huge spending measure, which was passed on a 267-151 vote, would fund federal operations through September. It leaves in place automatic cuts of 5 percent to domestic agencies and 7.8 percent to the Pentagon ordered by President Barack Obama Friday night after months of battling Republicans over the budget.
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.
Over the past few years, unimplemented agency inspector general recommendations that could potentially save the government billions of dollars have piled up. Now, with $85 billion in automatic budget cuts kicking in, lawmakers on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are telling agencies there's no excuse for them to further delay implementing the cost-saving measures and best practices identified by their IGs.
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.
A House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing on the decision by the Defense and Veterans Affairs Departments to scale back plans for a joint integrated electronic-health records systems dredged up longstanding issues with the two departments' EHR efforts.
The House Rules Committee voted to fast-track legislation extending the pay freeze for federal employees through the end of the fiscal year. Federal workers are now slated to get a 0.5 percent pay increase in March when a stopgap continuing resolution expired. However, the measure approved by the House Rules Committee, introduced by Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), would block that increase.
The U.S. Postal Service's worsening financial situation led Postmaster General Pat Donahoe to announce last week the agency would end Saturday mail delivery beginning in August. But lawmakers on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee were divided over Donahoe's announcement. The postmaster general told the committee during a hearing Wednesday the decision was necessary to save $2 billion a year and to begin shoring up the service's funding shortfalls.
Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have proposed an alternative to the automatic budget cuts set to go into effect next month that includes reducing the size of the federal workforce by 10 percent through attrition.
Thanks to congressional redistricting, many members of the House of Representatives have jobs for life if they choose to keep running for reelection. Senior Correspondent Mike Causey wonders: Is it maybe time for term limits for everybody?