This week on AFGE's Inside Government, Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness discusses the realities of tax reform; Bill Press of the Bill Press Show talks about the Affordable Care Act and its impact on the midterm elections, Union Radio and sequestration; Katherine McFate, president and CEO of the Center for Effective Government examines the impact of current federal funding levels; and, AFGE National President J. David Cox explains why AFGE is advocating for a 4 percent pay increase for government employees.
Military officials say overseas contingency operations dollars are vital to ongoing operations around the world, even after the wars end. All the services tell the House Armed Services Committee that OCO funding is helping with readiness and maintenance challenges.
The Army says it is now replacing funds in its readiness accounts that were depleted when cuts under sequestration first kicked in a year ago. But last year's readiness problems are likely to repeat in 2016 and beyond if Congress allows the automatic Defense cuts in current law to persist.
An update about how robotic, unmanned vehicles will augment brigades of the future.
The Air Force says it won't fully recover from its readiness shortfalls for another decade.
Air Force officials say their service already was facing readiness issues because of the high operational tempo of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But sequestration worsened the problems, and continuing the budget caps will set back a readiness recovery.
Like many agencies, the Coast Guard continues to feel the effects of sequestration, reducing its operating costs by 25 percent last year. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Bob Papp talks about where the agency was impacted most and how it worked through the challenges.
Why capturing drug smugglers is becoming harder for the Coast Guard.
The Merit Systems Protection Board seeks additional resources in its fiscal 2015 budget request to improve staffing and IT infrastructure. The agency is working through more than 32,000 furlough appeals in addition to its regular workload and also expects a wave of administrative judge retirements.
In a new report provided to the House Budget Committee, the Government Accountability Office provides more details of just how agencies coped with the mandatory budget reductions under sequestration. Nearly every agency surveyed by GAO canceled or limited monetary performance awards for employees, reduced spending on both travel and training and curtailed hiring. A total of seven agencies furloughed employees.
Air Force leaders intend to surpass their share of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's edict to reduce DoD headquarters spending by 20 percent and complete the task several years ahead of schedule. The personnel cuts are part of the service's plan to shrink its size in order to catch up with decades of deferred spending on readiness and modernization.
The Senate subcommittee with oversight of the federal workforce will take up the issue of federal-employee compensation and sinking employee morale. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), the subcommittee chairman, said at the National Treasury Employees Union's annual legislative conference that the hearing would focus, in part, on making sure federal pay stays competitive with the private sector.
In a new report to lawmakers, the White House determined discretionary spending fell $2 billion below the Budget Control Act caps.
Kathryn Sullivan, the acting under secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, sent an email to staff today announcing she was lifting the hiring freeze ban on non-mandatory training NOAA put in place last year to offset the impact of sequestration.
The Army's senior leaders have made clear for months that their service's end strength will have to decrease as a result of budget pressure. But the cutbacks can't be only to personnel. Some of the Army's major modernization priorities will have to be sidelined, at least for now.