Monthly Archives: November, 2008

Campaigning for presidential candidate Sen. John McCain hasn’t cost Sen. Joe Lieberman his coveted chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced this morning that Lieberman will retain his chairmanship, ending months of speculation of whether the Democrats would punish Lieberman for backing McCain publicly. Connecticut’s Lieberman is registered as an independent, though he caucuses with the Democrats. And it’s very clear that the vast majority of the Democratic Caucus wants to keep Sen. Lieberman as chairman of his committee, member of the Armed Services Committee, and that was done. It’s all…

CBO director Peter Orszag is the likely choice to head the Office of Management and Budget. The National Journal is reporting that President-elect Barack Obama will name Congressional Budget Office director Peter Orszag as director of the Office of Management and Budget. The OMB director will play a crucial role in the Obama administration, which inherits a $10 billion national debt and an annual deficit approaching $1 trillion. He will also be responsible for putting together Obama’s 2010 budget — and trying to push the 2009 budget through Congress before the current continuing resolution ends on March 6. Orszag has…

FedLine noted last week that Treasury secretary Henry Paulson had spent almost half of the $700 billion allocated as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (or “the bailout,” as we like to call it). The Obama administration apparently gets to spend the other half. At a contentious House Financial Services committee hearing today, Paulson said he didn’t think spending the other $350 billion in the next two months was the best plan: We have decided the best course of action is to preserve half of the TARP fund for flexibility, and for the next administration. This sets up an…

You could say Sen. Ron Wyden is unhappy with Treasury’s actions on the Troubled Asset Relief Program. “It’s like Dodge City before the marshals show up,” said Wyden, D-Ore., bemoaning the lack of oversight into Treasury’s spending of $700 billion intended to unfreeze the credit markets. This analogy was thrown out at today’s Senate Finance Committee hearing regarding the nomination of Neil Barofsky as the special inspector general for TARP. The committee doesn’t have jurisdiction to deliberate on Barofsky’s nomination — that falls to the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday — but its members wanted to discuss their concerns with…

There has been a lot of attention on who is coming into government these days, but let us not forget who is leaving and where they are going. Retiring Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va, one of the few members of Congress deeply involved and interested in government information technology and procurement issues, is joining the consulting firm Deloitte, a government contractor offering financial and consulting services. While serving on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Davis has been panned by watchdogs for his close ties to industry and praised by industry for his understanding of their needs. According to Deloitte’s…

Existing agencies and departments could be called on to help implement new energy legislation, said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., this morning. Speaking this morning at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee said agencies may be playing bigger roles in energy reduction, should energy legislation be passed. That could include administering programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and carbon cap and trades. “A significant time and opportunity cost is associated with starting a new institution from scratch. We need to make good use of the existing institutions we have,” he…

I’ve received a lot of feedback today on one of this week’s front-page stories, about the U.S. Postal Service’s dire financial condition. Most commenters seem in favor of ending Saturday delivery, which experts say could happen in the next few years. A rural letter carrier who works six days a week wrote: It’s time to bite the bullet and change the old ways of 6-day delivery. I know that 4-10 hour days can never happen, but I would like maybe 5-8 hour day weeks. Having no family time by working 6 days is not fun. Another commenter suggested even more…

Plans for a consolidated home for the newest Cabinet agency, the Homeland Security Department, are laid out in impressive detail in a series of documents that were submitted to federal planning officials earlier this week. Here are some highlights: The master plan calls for 4.5 million square feet of new and existing office space, plus another 1.5 million square feet of parking. Most of the development will be located on the west campus of the former St. Elizabeths mental hospital, a 176-acre site in southeast Washington that predates the Civil War. However, about 750,000 square feet of office space and another 270,000 square…

The proof is out there…thanks to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble took the first picture of a planet outside our solar system orbiting a star called Fomalhaut, NASA has announced. Hubble astronomer Paul Kalas, of the University of California at Berkley, and his team have been studying debris around the star since 2001. Obervations taken 21 months apart show that there is an object moving around that star the way Earth moves around the sun. To celebrate this federally supported discovery, we give you the following facts, courtesy of NASA: The planet called Fomalhaut b is located 25 light-years away from us in the costellation Piscis…

Turns out the historic inauguration celebration planned for President-elect Barack Obama on Jan. 20 has brought out the capitalist in many DC-area residents. With most hotel rooms already booked, many homeowners and renters in the nation’s capital are advertising their homes for rent for the festivities. As this story from the real estate website Urban Turf points out, going rates are steep. A 2,600-square-foot, three-bedroom condo about two miles from the White House is asking $10,000 for the week — double the monthly rent for a comparable property in the neighborhood. FedLine wonders if any federal employees are looking to get into…

1 2 3 4 5 7