Senate considers continuing resolution
September 30th, 2009 | 2010 Budget Agencies Congress | Posted by Rebecca Neal
The Senate may vote on a continuing resolution late this afternoon, just hours before the end of the fiscal year at midnight.
The House passed the CR Sept. 25, which includes additional funding for veterans health care and the Census Bureau. All other federal agencies would operate under fiscal 2009 funding levels until their appropriations bills are passed or the CR expires Oct. 31.
We’ll keep you posted on any congressional action on the continuing resolution.
House to take up continuing resolution
September 21st, 2009 | 2010 Budget Agencies Congress | Posted by Rebecca Neal
The House will take up a continuing resolution this week to keep agencies operating at fiscal 2009 levels while Congress completes the 12 annual appropriations bills, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced Sept. 17.
The CR will not come up before Wednesday, according to the tentative House floor schedule. A final vote has not been scheduled, so it’s unclear if the CR will be finished this week.
The House has passed all 12 of its fiscal 2010 appropriations bills, while the Senate has passed six. The end of the fiscal year is Sept. 30, and agencies have adapted to the annual pattern of continuing resolutions, also known as CRs.
Congress has not completed its work on all federal appropriations bills before Oct. 1 since 1997. It usually passes one or more continuing resolutions, keeping agencies funded at the previous years’ spending levels, until Congress either completes work on all of the bills or wraps them up into a consolidated spending bill, known as an omnibus.
In 2009, Congress passed on-time appropriations for three agencies: Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs. All other agencies operated under a CR until March, when Congress passed an omnibus containing new spending levels.
House Appropriations approves two bills
June 15th, 2009 | 2010 Budget Agencies Congress | Posted by Rebecca Neal
The House Appropriations Committee approved the Homeland Security and Legislative Branch fiscal year 2010 appropriations draft bills at a markup Friday.
The Homeland Security bill provides $42.63 billion for the agency, compared to President Barack Obama’s $42.83 billion request for fiscal year 2010. In 2009, the agency received $39.98 billion.
The bill cuts $135 million requested for agency operations due to “staffing vacancies, redundant policy initiatives and poorly justified request to consolidate DHS headquarters for those agencies not moving to St. Elizabeths,” according to a committee news release.
The bill includes:
- $10 billion for Customs and Border Protection, $82 million less than Obama requested, due to slight cuts in funding requests for multiple programs. This is $147 million more than the 2009 funding.
- $5.4 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, $30 million less than the president’s request but $439 million more than 2009.
- $382 million for cybersecurity, $19 million less than the president requested and $68 million more than 2009.
The committee also approved the $3.7 billion draft bill to fund the Legislative Branch, $300 million than requested but $600 million more than 2009.
The bill includes:
- $559 million for the Government Accountability Office, $9 million less than the president’s request and $28 million more than 2009.
- $45 million for the Congressional Budget Office, $1.2 million less than Obama requested and $1 million more than 2009.
The House plans to take up the Homeland Security bill Friday and the Legislative Branch bill June 24.
Tags: CBO, CBP, Congress, cybersecurity, GAO, Homeland Security, ICE
Making the case
May 21st, 2009 | 2010 Budget Food and Drug Administration | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
Deadline day around here and things are a bit busy, but I wanted to comment on an FDA appropriations hearing I covered this morning.
The agency is getting a huge boost in the president’s 2010 budget proposal — $511 million, or 19 percent. Much of that money will pay for more than 1,200 new hires. That means a 30 percent staffing boost over two years, when you include the 1,500 new employees hired this year.
The numbers prompted some back-and-forth with legislators, as you might expect. A few Republicans thought they were too large; Democrats hinted they might be too small.
But the Goldilocks-esque search for a middle ground can seem very arbitrary. The FDA says, for example, that it needs money to hire 220 new food safety investigators, which will allow it to conduct 4,000 additional inspections every year. But why is 4,000 the right number? Why not 3,000, or 5,000, or 10,000?
Tags: budget, food safety, Joshua Sharfstein
Penny Pinching, Government Style
May 7th, 2009 | 2010 Budget Procurement | Posted by Elise Castelli
My colleague Gregg Carlstrom already highlighted the budget cuts that the White House said will lead to $17 billion in savings in 2010. But I wanted to highlight a few items tucked into that figure that represent savings that came not from cuts, but from better contract management.
Among the items dubbed “other savings” in the White House’s “Terminations, Reductions and Savings” report released today:
- The Environmental Protection Agency’s consolidation of 22 information technology contracts for desktop support saved the agency $2 million. The new, single contract centralized help desk support, provided more energy efficient equipment and improved security.
- The Education Department achieved $8 million in savings last year by reducing the numbers of computers and printers it leases. Computers were reduced to 1,400, or about one per user from an average of 1.5 per user. More significantly, Education implemented a new network printer strategy that reduces the number of printers from 5,000 to 1,300, serving 10 people per printer and saving ink and paper. Going forward these efforts will save Education 7 percent to 10 percent annually on its contractor-owned and operated computer network.Â
- The Homeland Security Department will save up to $59 million annually over the next five years through consolidated purchasing of office supplies and computer software, which leverages the departments buying power to obtain bulk purchasing discounts.
- The State Department will also save 7 percent to 10 percent on office supplies, furniture, medical supplies, cell phones, personal digital assistants and other commodities by consolidating purchases under one vendor to take advantage of volume discounts. The White House report did not an exact dollar amount for the department’s savings.
Relatively speaking, these savings are small. But as Benjamin Franklin once said, “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
Tags: budget cuts, contracting, strategic sourcing
Calm before the storm
May 4th, 2009 | 2010 Budget Homeland Security Regulation | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
Okay, maybe not the best metaphor, since it’s been raining all day in Washington.
Nonetheless: In the next five days, the Obama administration is probably going to release a more detailed 2010 budget proposal, its cybersecurity review, and the details of the bank “stress tests.”
Busy week. The details of the stress tests have been slowly leaking out — Citigroup and Bank of America both need more capital — and it’s an open secret that the cybersecurity review will call for a big White House role in cybersecurity. But it will be interesting to dig into the specifics. And, of course, there’s the budget, which will surely set off a political firestorm on Capitol Hill. (We’ll have full coverage of the budget after it’s released on Thursday.)
Tags: banks, budget, cybersecurity
More coming on Gates' plan to shake up DoD
April 7th, 2009 | 2010 Budget Defense Procurement | Posted by Steve Watkins
Want to hear more on Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ plans to dramatically reshape his department’s programs and priorities? You can watch him discuss those plans in an interview tonight on PBS’ The New Hour with Jim Lehrer.
Gates announced yesterday his long-awaited plan to make some deep program cuts. His plan would end some defense programs such as the Air Force’s F-22 fighter and combat search-and-rescue helicopter program, the Army’s Future Combat Systems armored vehicle programs, the Navy’s new DDG-1000 destroyer, and the Marine Corps’ presidential helicopter program. And he proposes to beef up spending on other priorities such as the Joint Strike Fighter, medical research, more acquisition personnel, and insourcing work done by contractors.
What do you think of Gates’ plan? Do these program cuts make sense? Should military requirements be the only factor in deciding which programs to cut or should he also think about the jobs at stake? Will Congress allow these plans to go forward? Should the Pentagon hire thousands more acquisition staff? And is insourcing of contractor work long overdue or a terrible idea?
Tags: acquisition, Add new tag, Defense Department, Gates
Defense to insource acquisition support
April 6th, 2009 | 2010 Budget Defense Procurement | Posted by Elise Castelli
Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he will convert 11,000 acquisition contracting jobs to Defense employees and hire 9,000 more government acquisition staff by 2015. He plans to start with 4,100 employees in fiscal 2010, the budget he presented at a news conference today.
You can read his full budget speech here.
Tags: acquisition reform, acquisition workforce, insourcing, Robert Gates
2010 Budget: Program cuts
February 26th, 2009 | 2010 Budget Agency Management Agriculture Education Interior Procurement | Posted by Tim Kauffman
During a news briefing this morning at the Old Executive Office Building to roll out his 2010 budget, President Obama provided a little more detail about some of the nearly $2 trillion in proposed cuts he mentioned during his joint session to Congress on Tuesday.
The highlights — or lowlights, depending on your view:
- Nearly $200 million at the Interior Department by cutting programs to clean up abandoned coal mines that have already been cleaned up.
- Nearly $20 million by modernizing programs and streamlining bureaucracy at the Agriculture Department.
- Tens of millions of dollars by cutting an Education Department student mentoring program whose mission is being carrried out by 100 other programs in 13 other agencies.
- Nearly $50 billion by cutting out benefits to citizens who aren’t entitled to them and closing tax loopholes to businesses.
Additionally, Obama said the budget would save billions by ending no-bid contracts in Iraq, ending tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas and rolling back tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
The $2 trillion is just what has been identified during the first 30 days that the administration has been in office, Obama said. Further cuts will be proposed as part of the full budget Obama said will be released this Spring.
Tags: President Barack Obama
Obama promises budget reform, no earmarks
February 24th, 2009 | 2010 Budget Agencies Congress Treasury | Posted by Rebecca Neal
Days before he presents his first budget, President Barack Obama Tuesday night pledged to restore accountability to the budgeting process and cut outdated programs.
“This budget looks ahead ten years and accounts for spending that was left out under the old rules — and for the first time, that includes the full cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. For seven years, we have been a nation at war. No longer will we hide its price,” Obama told a joint session of Congress.
He added that his proposed 2010 budget will would end no-bid contracts in Iraq, as well as eliminate education programs that haven’t worked. He also touted his administration’s line-by-line review of the federal budget and agency management in a quest to eliminate useless programs.
“As you can imagine, this is a process that will take some time. But we’re starting with the biggest lines. We have already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade,” Obama said to applause from both sides of the aisle.
He also informed Congress he expected the budget to contain no earmarks just like the recently passed economic stimulus package, which brought laughs and hisses from the Republican side of the House chamber. Republicans have contended that the stimulus contained too many pet Democratic projects and not enough tax cuts.
“I’m proud that we passed the recovery plan free of earmarks, and I want to pass a budget next year that ensures that each dollar we spend reflects only our most important national priorities,” Obama said.
Much of his speech addressed the state of the economy as well as the failure of the Troubled Asset Relief Program to hold banks accountable for public money they received. He said banks will be made to account for how taxpayer dollars have resulted in more lending, freeing up stalled credit markets. He also called on Congress to change the regulatory system he said allowed the economy to sink so low.
“And to ensure that a crisis of this magnitude never happens again, I ask Congress to move quickly on legislation that will finally reform our outdated regulatory system. It is time to put in place tough new common-sense rules of the road so that our financial market rewards drive and innovation and punishes short cuts and abuse,” he said.
Obama received an overwhelming welcome for his first address to Congress as president. Two others received a particularly rousing welcome as well: Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, weeks removed from pancreatic cancer surgery, and Chesley Sullenberger, captain of US Airways Flight 1549 that landed in the Hudson River in January.
Tags: Barack Obama, budget, Congress