Browsing: Agencies

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…

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…

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…

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…

Update II: Around lunchtime, Justice released a statement saying all of Mukasey’s tests came back clear.  Talamona said: He has been given a clean bill of health. We expect him to be released in the next couple of hours. We also anticipate he will be back at the department later today.   Update: The Justice Department just released the full transcript of this morning’s briefing on Mukasey’s condition. Here is what Justice spokeswoman Gina Talamona said: There is no indication that he suffered a stroke or any heart-related incident. It really appears to have been a fainting spell. You know, he works long days,…

We’ve already reported that agencies are likely to face new environmental goals under the Obama administration. They’re also going to have to learn to work together. The group of advisers developing key proposals and plans for energy and environmental policies under the new administration met this week to discuss issues that will need to be addressed right away, like climate change and rising energy costs. The head of the group, Carol Browner, who led the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration, said the focus will be on getting agencies like the EPA, Energy Department and others to better coordinate their efforts. One…

At the pace in which potential candidates for top spots in the Obama administration are being leaked to the press, it was bound to happen: someone got one wrong. CNN quoted multiple unnamed sources yesterday evening that Obama fundraiser Penny Pritzker was the top choice to become secretary of the Commerce Department. The 49-year-old billionaire heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune, Pritzker was national finance chair of Obama’s record-breaking presidential campaign, which netted $640 million. But after numerous media sources picked up the news, Pritzer issued a statement today saying she was not in the running for the position. ABC News…

Earlier today we mentioned that Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano is at the top of the list of candidates to take over the Homeland Security Department. And, as the Government Accountability Office reminds us in a new report released today, she would take over an agency full of management challenges. From the GAO: However, most initiatives related to defining and identifying the acquisition workforce and assessing workforce needs have not yet produced results and in some cases are progressing more slowly than originally projected. The department spends more than $10 billion each year on contracts — including some expensive and hard-to-manage…