House Oversight squabbles over health care
November 5th, 2009 | Congress Pay & Benefits | Posted by Rebecca Neal
Will the House’s health care bill change your Federal Employees Health Benefits Program? It depends who you ask on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which oversees the FEHBP.
Sixteen committee Republicans sent a letter to Chairman Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., on Nov. 4, calling on him to schedule immediate hearings to analyze the impact H.R. 3692 may have on the FEHBP. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said Nov. 5 she has the votes to pass the health care bill on Nov. 7.
In the letter, Republicans said they need clarification on what the bill could do to participants in the FEHBP.
We believe the legislation in its current form may have a significant impact on FEHBP, including the possibility that FEHBP may not be deemed a ‘qualified health benefits plan’ for purposes of the bill, which will have the effect of either forcing federal employees out of their current coverage and into the ‘public option,’ or subjecting them to a tax for failure to obtain ‘acceptable health coverage.”
The Republicans are just trying to stall the health care bill with “baseless concerns,” Towns replied in a Nov. 4 news release.
Any suggestion that federal employees may be forced out of insurance coverage and subjected to an additional tax is false and has no basis in the text of the bill. Under H.R. 3962, federal employees will remain in their current system, and will also benefit from the same improvements to health insurance plans that all other Americans will enjoy, such as ending copayments for preventative medicine and automatic enrollment. Insurance providers participating in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) will be subject to the same rules and regulations covering all other health insurance plans.”
GAO to report on GSA
November 4th, 2009 | Congress General Services Administration Procurement | Posted by Elise Castelli
The Government Accountability Office will report on the General Services Administration’s management of its supply schedules in the spring,said John Needham, a director of acquisition and sourcing management for the watchdog agency.
The report will look at whether GSA’s reorganization improved management of the Multiple Award Schedules program and the effectiveness of the management tools GSA has in place, he said. Mismanagement of the schedules program led to a series of contracting scandals five years ago. The scandals prompted GAO to add interagency contracts to its High Risk List.
In addition, the report will address concerns raised by the congressionally charted Acquisition Advisory Panel in a 2007 report, Needham said. The panel found that agencies weren’t competing orders placed through established interagency, multiple awards contracts. In addition, the panel raised concerns that there were too many interagency contracts competing with each other and hampering the government’s abilities to get a good price.
Needham spoke at the Coalition for Government Procurement’s fall conference today.
Rep. Lynch knows his video games
November 3rd, 2009 | Agencies Congress Pay & Benefits | Posted by Rebecca Neal
In the video game world, your Web site is ‘Pong.’”
– Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., told Greg Long, executive director of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, at a Nov. 3 hearing in reference to the state of the TSP’s Web site, comparing it to one of the first arcade games.
The board is working to make its Web site more user friendly and improve the information available, Long told members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s subcommitee on the federal workforce, postal service and the District of Columbia.
One step closer to OFPP, TSA administrators
November 3rd, 2009 | Congress Homeland Security OMB Procurement Transportation Security Administration | Posted by Elise Castelli
The Office of Management and Budget’s prospective procurement policy chief, Daniel Gordon, will face his first confirmation hurdle one week from today.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will quiz Gordon on his vision for the Office of Federal Procurement Policy at 10 a.m. on Nov. 10. Gordon is slated to have his confirmation quiz alongside the president’s choice to lead the Transportation Security Administration, Erroll Southers.
Check in with FedLine and FederalTimes.com that day for complete coverage.
Tags: Daniel Gordon, Erroll Southers, OFPP, TSA
Senate confirms surgeon general
October 29th, 2009 | Agencies Congress HHS | Posted by Rebecca Neal
Senators unanimously confirmed Dr. Regina Benjamin Thursday as the next U.S. surgeon general.
Benjamin is the founder of the Bayou Le Batre Rural Health Clinic in Bayou La Batre, Ala., a fishing village, and has served as its chief executive officer since its founding in 1990.
Benjamin has rebuilt the clinic several times, including after Hurricane Georges in 1998 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Atlanta neurosurgeon and CNN correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta was rumored earlier this year to be Obama’s first choice for surgeon general, but Gupta pulled his name from consideration, citing his desire to spend more time on his current work.
President signs end to NSPS
October 28th, 2009 | Agencies Congress Defense Pay & Benefits | Posted by Rebecca Neal
President Barack Obama signed the Defense authorization bill into law Wednesday afternoon, marking the eventual end to the controversial National Security Personnel System.
HR 2647 phases out the NSPS pay-for-performance system by Jan 1, 2012, and the Pentagon has six months from Wednesday to start transferring employees over to their original pay system. For many employees, that means a return to the General Schedule.
The bill also contains a number of provisions long anticipated by federal employees:
- Federal Employment Retirement System (FERS) employees will be able to count unused sick leave toward their years of service, just as Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) employees can. This may end the epidemic of “FERS flu,” where soon-to-retire employees burn off sick leave because they couldn’t receive credit for it.
- FERS employees returning to work for the federal government would be able to redeposit their annuities.
- CSRS employees who work part time at the end of their careers would be able to have their annuities recalculated to be based only on their full-time salaries.
- Retirees returning to work for the federal government would be able to collect their full salaries while drawing their annuities. Agencies used to be able to pay rehired annuitants a full salary only if they obtained a waiver from the Office of Personnel Management.
- Federal employees in Alaska, Hawaii and U.S. territories will now receive locality pay instead of cost of living. Employees in the continental U.S. receive locality pay.
Feel free to celebrate in the comments section below, feds!
Martha Johnson, GSA Administrator in waiting, still waiting
October 14th, 2009 | Congress General Services Administration Uncategorized | Posted by Elise Castelli
Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., continues to hold up the vote on Martha Johnson’s nomination to lead the General Services Administration. Bond placed a hold on her confirmation this summer to squeeze the agency for information about why it wasn’t closing down the federally owned Bannister Complex outside Kansas City, Mo. and relocating staff to leased space downtown, as previously planned.
GSA’s new Public Building Service commissioner, Robert Peck, responded to Bond, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., in a letter last week.
In the Oct. 9 letter, Peck explained that plans to close Bannister are still on the table, but GSA has changed its approach to obtaining new space. GSA is scrapping the proposal submitted to Congress last year to replace Bannister with a “lease-construction” project, where a private developer builds space to the government’s specifications and then leases it to the government. GSA has turned away from this plan because further research shows it will be cheaper in the long-term for GSA to build and own a new federal building downtown.
Peck wrote:
Neither leasing space, nor a lease-construction project is our preferred option. Fiscal analyses show that building and owning a federal building is the lowest long-term cost solution. Kansas City also has sufficient federal agencies in leased space to support incurring additional federal ownership of space. Accordingly, we are prepared to begin site selection and design for a new federal building in Kansas City’s central employment area as soon as we can secure the requisite congressional approvals and funding.
Peck also noted that before entering a lease-construction agreement, the agency first must hold a competition to see if suitable space is already available. Because Kansas City has many office building vacancies, a lease-construction project would likely turn into a lease, Peck said.
Despite these assurances, it appears Bond is not satisfied. According to today’s Kansas City Star, he has not lifted the hold on Johnson’s nomination. Bond’s spokeswoman Shana Marchio told the Star “we need answers on the how and when this project will move forward,” adding that “without those answers, we cannot know how to evaluate the message from GSA.”
Tags: Martha Johnson, Sen. Kit Bond
Thanks, DHS!
October 1st, 2009 | Agencies Congress Homeland Security | Posted by Rebecca Neal
If you work at the Homeland Security Department, the House of Representatives has some kind words for you.
Members of Congress love to bash DHS and interrogate officials at frequent congressional hearings, but the House voted Thursday to approve a resolution, H.Res. 731, expressing appreciation for the work DHS employees do. Here’s the official description of the bill:
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the employees of the Department of Homeland Security, their partners at all levels of government, and the millions of emergency response providers and law enforcement agents nationwide should be commended for their dedicated service on the Nation’s front lines in the war against acts of terrorism.
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.
Sen. Robert Bennett Joins Oversight Subcommittee
September 29th, 2009 | Congress Procurement | Posted by Elise Castelli
Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, made his debut as ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight today.
During the hearing on improving government procurement data systems, Bennett spoke of the importance of balancing the need for transparency with the need to protect some contract information from the public eye. (Check FederalTimes.com later for more on the hearing)
Industry representative, Trey Hodgkins, national security and procurement policy vice president for TechAmerica, testified that companies were concerned new policies might permit the publication of un-redacted contracts and allow access to past performance reports, which could contain proprietary information.
If government creates a central database contractors won’t agree to use, it’s the government that loses because it narrows the pool of contractors willing to compete for work, Bennett said. The fewer the players, the higher the cost to government, he said. Already, government’s cumbersome procurement rules cause some of the best players in the market to eschew government contracting, hurting competition, he said.
Bennett expressed similar views last week during an interview with Federal Times about what he hopes to accomplish on the subcommittee.
One of his top priorities is to encourage competition. Last week, Bennett said:
There are too many organizations that say ‘we don’t want to bid for government work because it’s too cumbersome and there are too many rules and restrictions that don’t make sense.’
Bennett said he hopes to take a look at policies that make it too costly for some firms to do business with government to ensure the largest competition pool possible. Without reform, “you run the risk of good businesses staying away from federal competition and you end up with a smaller competitive pool to choose from. As a result you don’t have the best value.”