If the government shuts down this week, most Department of Homeland Security employees will continue working. DHS spokesman Larry Orluskie said 80 percent of the department’s 230,000 workforce will continue to carry out mission critical duties, such as securing the borders, screening cargo and airline passengers and operating and securing systems that support these activities. “We’re working with the guidance, and we’re working with our business and mission partners to identify those systems that have to stay up,” said Richard Spires, DHS’ chief information officer. “We’re prepared, and we will keep those systems running.” That includes determining which contracts are mission critical.…
Browsing: 2011 Budget
In an interview with CNN, David Stockman, former Office of Management and Budget director in the Reagan Administration, was asked if he thinks congressional leaders will forgo a budget deal and allow a government shutdown to happen this week. And if a shutdown does happen, what would it accomplish? Stockman’s response: “The Republicans need to man-up and shut the government down. They have been bloviating for 30 years about cutting spending and have done almost nothing.” He went on to say: “And the government needs a shut-down crisis because both parties are dream walking. Sadly enough, we actually need a violent spasm in the…
Warning: Killjoy alert! As you all know (because you’re probably reading this from your office instead of your home), Congress last week struck a deal to keep government operating for another two weeks. So here we are today, the first Monday into the new CR, and federal agencies are operating, citizens are getting their government services, and feds are getting paid. What’s not to love about that? According to today’s excellent-but-depressing blog post by former Capitol Hill staffer and Wall Street consultant Peter Davis, plenty. Davis dissects the predicament we find ourselves in and concludes that the big-picture budget outlook…
With much of the government at risk of a forced vacation next month, there are some obvious parallels with the last such showdown, which resulted in back-to-back closures in late 1995 and early 1996. A bitter battle over spending; a Democratic president pitted against Republican lawmakers, many of them freshmen itching to shrink the federal footprint. The last time around, though, executive branch preparations appear to have started a lot sooner. Consider some evidence gleaned from congressional testimony: On August 22, 1995—almost three full months before the first shutdown occurred that November–then-Office of Management and Budget Director Alice Rivlin told all department…
This probably comes as no shock, but President Obama is threatening to veto a Republican-backed bill that would slash a net total of $61 billion in agency discretionary spending for this fiscal year. Although the administration is committed to cutting spending, it “does not support deep cuts that will undermine our ability to out-educate, out-build and out-innovate the rest of the world,” the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a statement this afternoon. The administration also charges that the GOP legislation—which was introduced last Friday and is now being debated on the House floor–would reduce Defense Department…
Last February, the Obama administration used its fiscal 2011 budget request to roll out more than 120 “high-priority performance goals” for federal agencies to meet. Twelve months later, how are all those agencies doing? You won’t find out from the White House’s FY12 request. “Significant progress has been made on some priority goals, while weaknesses have been identified and are being addressed in others,” the document says. It then cites a couple of the cheerier examples—such as the Energy Department’s weatherizing 295,000 homes—but with no context and few details. The agency-by-agency list of goals posted on the White House web…
Sorry, feds: It will be at least one more day before you find out what House Republicans have in store for your agency’s budget. Earlier this week, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., had hoped to introduce legislation today spelling out more than $74 billion in possible cuts from agency spending this year, when measured against President Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget request. But earlier in the day, Rogers announced that the target has swelled to $100 billion. As a result, the bill won’t be introduced before Friday at the earliest. “I have instructed my committee to include these deeper…
Not that there was much suspense, but the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday evening formally adopted a Republican blueprint for slicing almost $35 billion in discretionary spending from agency budgets for this fiscal year. The 27-22, mostly party-line vote followed an hour or so of debate in which Democrats decried the proposed reductions as harsh and Republicans defended them as necessary. The blueprint covers the remainder of this fiscal year, which began in October. Overall, non-defense, non-security outlays would be chopped by about 9 percent. While transportation and housing programs would take a 17 percent hit, funding for the State…
Cutting federal spending—at least on paper—is fast becoming Washington’s newest growth industry. Get ready for the latest contribution tomorrow when eight senators release a bill to reduce spending as a percentage of the nation’s gross domestic product. Known as the Commitment to American Prosperity Act (aka, the “CAP Act”), the measure would set a 10-year “glide path” to cap all spending—apparently including funding for popular entitlement programs like Medicare—from the current 24.7 percent of GDP to what a news release calls “the historical level” of 20.6 percent. The lead sponsors are Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. Sen.…
Back in July, the Office of Management and Budget announced that roughly $100 million had been allocated to 35 program evaluations and “evaluation capacity-building proposals” across the government. But allocated isn’t the same thing as appropriated. It turns out that agencies have yet to see a dime because Congress has yet to pass a fiscal 2011 budget. Instead, agencies are operating off a continuing resolution out that generally keeps spending frozen at 2010 levels. “We are very committed to evaluating what works and what doesn’t to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent effectively, but these evaluations have not been funded yet…