Postal unions and Rep. Darrell Issa are mixing it up again. This time it’s over the California Republican’s bid to scrap a long-standing congressional requirement for the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail six days a week. That requirement is the main obstacle to the Postal Service’s ending most Saturday delivery, a step the agency says will save $3 billion per year. In a letter last month, Issa asked Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., to drop the six-day language from an appropriations bill that her financial services subcommittee was drafting. Emerson didn’t go along, but Issa, who chairs the House…
Monthly Archives: July, 2011
The Social Security Administration doesn’t know whether the Social Security Administration will keep paying benefits if the government defaults on its debt. That, anyway, is what management is telling employees to say when asked by the public. In newly posted instructions on the agency’s web side, employees are told to respond, “We’re sorry, but we don’t know,” when people inquire about the status of their Social Security or Supplemental Security Income checks should Congress fail to raise the federal debt ceiling. Well, chances are they wouldn’t want to know anyway.
Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, are calling on Senate leaders to reject a proposal that would create a temporary committee to draft cybersecurity legislation. In a joint letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Collins and Lieberman said the creation of a temporary committee “would be a real mistake and a waste of time,” according to the July 13 letter. In an earlier letter, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., proposed the creation of the Select Committee on Cyber Security and Electronic Intelligence Leaks to create legislation to protect critical infrastructure like…
As part of an effort to eliminate and consolidate thousands of federal websites, the White House this week released a list of 1,759 top-level sites and named a 17-member task force to lead the cost-cutting initiative. Under the new policy, outlined by federal Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients in a June 13 memo, the White House is freezing creation of all new .gov domains for 90 days. The effort is expected to eliminate waste and duplication, save money and enhance the public’s online interaction with the government. The .gov task force, whose 17 members include–Todd Park, chief technology officer at the Health and…
The former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld got hung up in Chicago O’Hare International Airport yesterday afternoon. Rumsfled was stopped by TSA agents and patted down after setting off the metal detector. The 13th and 21st Secretary of Defense was reported as being a good sport by TMZ, they even have pictures to prove it! The former SECDEF even tweeted about his pat down: [blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/RumsfeldOffice/status/91502230078898176″] Rumsfeld was in hometown of Chicago attending a Heritage Foundation Panel & Luncheon.
Some noteworthy news today on the long and winding road to a paperless government: As of the end of fiscal 2012, all Treasury Department bureaus will have to use electronic invoicing. The move is expected to cut the department’s processing costs by about half to $7 million annually and will also mean faster payments for government vendors, Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin said in a news release. At the department, the Bureau of the Public Debt and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing already use electronic invoicing; the IRS, the Office of Thrift Supervision and a number of other offices will now have to get…
In a letter released today, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., takes aim at a union’s claim that the U.S. Postal Service gets no taxpayer support. Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, concedes that the Postal Service no longer receives a direct government operating subsidy, but cites a 2007 report that the agency benefits from many “implicit subsidies” and “extra powers” worth several hundred millions of dollars a year. Those include federal, state and local income tax exemptions, Issa wrote, as well as the ability to borrow from the federal treasury at low interest rates. The letter, dated Monday, is addressed…
Hackers operating under the name Anonymous said Monday that they infiltrated a server on Booz Allen Hamilton’s network, swiping some 90,000 military email addresses. “We infiltrated a server on their network that basically had no security measures in place,” the group posted on the website PirateBay. “We were able to run our own application, which turned out to be a shell.” Titled “Military Meltdown Monday,” the post said the group gained access to about 90,000 military emails and password hashes and alluded to having other sensitive information. On its Twitter account, Booz Allen Hamilton said as part of the company’s security policy, “we generally do not comment on specific…
Two small signs this month of how feds are adjusting to the prospect of tight money. One comes from the pages of the Federal Register, where last week, the National Agricultural Statistics Service announced that it is both suspending its July sheep and goat survey and indefinitely postponing its Census of Aquaculture and a separate land ownership survey “due to budgetary cutbacks.” The notice doesn’t say how much money is involved; NASS officials could not be reached for comment Friday. The other is a nugget from an Association of Government Accountants report this month on technology trends. What’s driving tech adoption nowdays? The potential to save…
The tug-of-war over the U.S. Postal Service’s very uncertain future hits the nation’s airwaves today with the kickoff of an American Postal Workers Union ad campaign that will run on national cable channels for up to two months. Contrary to what you might expect, given how testy the debate is becoming, the 30-second spot doesn’t bash anyone. Instead, it highlights the fact that the Postal Service generally operates without taxpayer support. While APWU members move millions of pounds of mail each day, the ad says, their work is “funded solely by stamps and postage.” So what’s the point? In a release, APWU President Cliff Guffey describes a two-fold…