An obscure provision in the U.S. Constitution poses a potential roadblock on Sen. Hillary Clinton’s path to becoming Secretary of State. It turns out that the Constitution (specifically Article I, Section 6) prohibits a lawmaker from taking any goverment job for which the salary was raised during the lawmaker’s elected term. As the Washington Post and numerous bloggers have noted, this would effectively preclude Clinton from taking the State Department gig. Salaries for Cabinet secretaries have been increased twice since Clinton started her second term as the junior New York senator in January 2007: to $191,300 in January 2008 and…
Monthly Archives: November, 2008
Thanksgiving is tomorrow. Let’s talk turkey shall we? How about 271 million turkeys for starters? That’s the number of turkeys that were raised in the U.S. since last Turkey Day, according to the Census Bureau, the keeper of all fun facts. According to Census the average American consumes 13.3 pounds annually. Here’s what else Census has to say about other Thanksgiving eats: The U.S. cranberry industry produced 689 million pounds of cranberries this year, up 5 percent from last year. And surprise, Wisconsin, not Massachusetts, leads the nation in cranberry production. Approximately 1.8 million pounds of sweet potatoes were harvested…
Attention government travelers, buyers and drivers: You may be immersed in the presidential transition (and have plans to flee work for the holiday weekend), but don’t forget this weekend is another transition…to the new government purchase, travel and fleet charge cards. At 11:59 p.m. Nov. 29 your old SmartPay cards will be useless, so be sure to have the new cards at the ready. That’s what David Shea, director of the General Services Administration’s SmartPay 2 program, tells us here at FedLine. Shea has these tips for feds who may be working this holiday weekend and need to use their…
MSNBC is reporting that John Brennan has just taken his name out of the running to be the next Director of Central Intelligence. Speculation that Brennan, a member of president-elect Barack Obama’s transition team, was a leading candidate to run the CIA sparked serious criticism from some who believed Brennan supported torturing terrorism suspects. In today’s letter to Obama, Brennan firmly denied those accusations: It has been immaterial to the critics that I have been a strong opponent of many of the policies of the Bush Administration such as the preemptive war in Iraq and coercive interrogation tactics, to include waterboarding. The…
12:06 PM: Obama reiterated his pledge to go “line-by-line” through the federal budget looking for failed programs: Budget reform is not an option. It’s a necessity. We can’t sustain a system that bleeds billions of taxpayer dollars on programs that have outlived their usefulness. We simply can’t afford it. 12:00 PM: On top of yesterday’s economic team announcements, the president-elect made two more official nominations today: As expected, Congressional Budget Office director Peter Orszag will take over as head of the Office of Management and Budget; Rob Nabors, the staff director of the House Appropriations committee, will be Orszag’s deputy…
This morning’s meeting of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board brought some sobering statistics on the Thrift Savings Plan’s performance in October. And investors continue to pull their money out of plummeting stock-based funds for the safety of the securities-backed G Fund, just as they have for most of 2008. Unfortunately, there’s no certain relief in sight for the economic troubles that are dragging the TSP down. Yesterday Citigroup became the latest bank to receive financial assistance from the federal government. Stocks rose today with the news of Citigroup’s bailout, as well as president-elect Barack Obama’s proposal for a $700 billion…
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., has introduced a bill which would freeze the “midnight rulemaking” that takes place at the end of an administration. The bill, H.R. 7296, would impact any regulation adopted in the final 90 days of a presidency. It would prevent those rules from taking effect until 90 days after the new president appoints a new agency head. So if the incoming president doesn’t like a new rule at, say, the Interior Department, his new Interior secretary could cancel the rule within 90 days of taking office. It’s an interesting idea, though it seems to us a bit…
12:27 PM: Obama pledged more “transparency and accountability” for the government’s rescue efforts under his administration. 12:18 PM: Obama called on the next Congress to put together an economic stimulus plan in January; he also promised to unveil proposals from his economic team in the next few weeks. Obama also acknowledged that any government stimulus plan could require cuts to other government programs: We’ll have to scour our federal budget, line by line, and make meaningful cuts and sacrifices. 12:10 PM: Not that it was much of a secret, but now it’s official. The president-elect just finished his speech at…
NBC News today reported that Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, will likely be Barack Obama’s Treasury Secretary. Along with current Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Geithner has been a central figure in formulating the government’s response to the recent economic turmoil. The choice of Geithner may have boosted confidence on Wall Street. In the last hour of trading, stocks shot up and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up nearly 500 points at its close. The Washington Post has this to say about Geithner: Geithner, who is 47, is most closely…
Karen Pica, head of the Federal Acquisition Institute, is moving to the Office of Management and Budget, FedLine has learned. While at FAI, the government’s school for training civilian procurement personnel, Pica has been a leader in acquisition work force recruitment and retention efforts. During her tenure, she worked with OMB to launch a Federal Acquisition Intern Coalition to recruit and train new hires to be contracting officers. FedLine is told that Pica will continue to focus on solving the shortfalls in the acquisition work force as a policy analyst for OMB’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy. No word yet…