Budget update: Civilian combat pay provisions still to come
February 3rd, 2010 | Defense | Posted by Steve Losey
Federal Times reported last week that the 2011 budget would propose a standardized slate of pay and benefits for federal civilians deployed to war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s apparently still coming, but it’s not here yet — the budget documents OMB released Monday contain no incentive package proposals.
The Pentagon just sent this statement to Federal Times after we inquired about the missing proposals: “We are still working on the standardized combat pay provisions package for submission into the fiscal year 2011 budget.”
Tags: budget, combat pay, Defense Department, war zone benefits
More 1.4% pay raise reax: ‘Better than no increase at all’
February 1st, 2010 | 2011 Budget | Posted by Steve Losey
Reactions are starting to roll in on what may be the smallest pay raise in the General Schedule’s history. The three largest federal unions applauded the White House’s return to pay parity, but objected that the modest pay raise would do little to close the pay gap between federal and private-sector workers. The American Federation of Government Employees, National Treasury Employees Union and the National Federation of Federal Employees all pledged to push Congress to increase the administration’s modest pay raise.
Here’s a sampling of comments:
At best, 1.4 percent is a modest adjustment. But in this economy, a modest increase is better than no increase at all.
- NFFE National President William Dougan
Tags: 2011 pay raise, budget, Unions
GPO to send Gibbs his own Kinko’s card
January 12th, 2010 | 2011 Budget | Posted by Steve Losey
A GPO employee oversees the printing of the fiscal 2010 budget last year/Photo courtesy of Government Printing Office
Nobody can say that the Government Printing Office lacks a sense of humor. After FedLine blogged White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ joke yesterday about sending the federal budget to Kinko’s — now called FedEx Office — GPO today said it will send Gibbs his own Kinko’s card.
Technically, it’s a GPOExpress card. Those cards allow federal employees to place a small-scale printing order at any FedEx Office branch and net the government up to 70 percent off of the cost. Public Printer Bob Tapella, who runs the agency, said GPOExpress has helped feds place more than 40,000 printing orders since the program was created in 2005.
But when it comes to the federal budget, GPO said that’s handled in-house. GPO said its printers and the Office of Management and Budget are sometimes still finalizing the budget the night before its release.
“GPO obviously does not take offense to Mr. Gibbs’ tongue-in-cheek comments on the printing of the budget,” Tapella said.
Tags: budget, fun, GPO, Kinko's, Robert Gibbs
The federal budget, brought to you by Kinko’s?
January 11th, 2010 | 2011 Budget | Posted by Steve Losey
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs appeared to announce a new outsourcing initiative at today’s press conference:
MR. GIBBS: I’m not going to get into details and specifics on a budget that will be released at a later day.
Q: It’s at the printers?
MR. GIBBS: And when it comes back from Kinko’s, we’ll be able to talk about it. It’s not really at Kinko’s, though, I was just — go ahead.
That sound you just heard was the Government Printing Office having a collective heart attack. Who knows what would happen to them if the White House actually started sending an intern down to the corner Kinko’s with all 2,500 pages of the budget on a thumb drive.
Tags: budget, fun, GPO, Kinko's, Robert Gibbs
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.
What you don't know…
July 20th, 2009 | Agencies Food and Drug Administration | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
I’ve done a fair amount of reporting on the FDA’s budgetary troubles over the last 18 months. The agency is chronically underfunded, with a rapidly-growing workload and a budget that has fallen 12 percent since 2002.
But apparently that isn’t the only problem, according to a new report (pdf) from the GAO:
FDA could not provide data showing its workload and accomplishments in some areas, such as its review of reports identifying potential safety issues with specific medical products. Without such information, FDA cannot develop complete and reliable estimates of its resource needs.
If I’m reading this right, the problem isn’t just that the FDA doesn’t have enough money — but that it doesn’t even know how much money it doesn’t have.
Tags: budget
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
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
Paper cuts
April 23rd, 2009 | White House | Posted by Gregg Carlstrom
Many newspaper editorial pages were skeptical about the president’s call for $100 million in spending cuts at federal agencies. Maybe they had good reason:
The Homeland Security Department is dropping some newspaper and magazine subscriptions to save money.
The agency has told its employees to cancel subscriptions to general interest newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post and to magazines such as Newsweek and Time by April 27.
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