If you’re looking for tickets to President-Elect Barack Obama’s inauguration and parade, you may want to prepare yourself for disappointment. While stopping in various congressional offices today, I noticed one thing: the phones are ringing off the hook. In fact, all of the phone lines were ringing at once for five solid minutes in one representative’s office, and all of the callers had the same question: How do I get tickets? Aides told me tickets aren’t yet available, and some offices have started waiting lists. It’s likely that, due to demand, the majority of the inaugural tickets will be held…
Browsing: Congress
A curious memo may halt spending on many earmarks intended for federal agencies. OMB Director Jim Nussle issued a memo Oct. 23 detailing conditions that must be met for agencies to spend earmarks embedded in the fiscal year 2009 continuing resolution, which also contains the Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans’ Affairs appropriations. In order for an agency to allocate funding for an earmark, the earmark must meet three conditions. They are: 1. It must have been in the FY 2008 appropriations bill; 2. It must continue in 2009 and beyond (no one-time, non-recurring projects or grants); and 3. The affected…
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., plans to introduce a bill next month to cap executives’ pay — and the bill has a catchy name. The “Stop the Greed on Wall Street Act” would ban companies that received cash from the Treasury Department’s financial rescue plan from paying any employees more than $400,000. That’s the salary currently earned by the U.S. president. The cap would make $400,000 the max for total compensation, including cars, benefits and retirement, all of which have added up to millions of extra dollars for CEOs. Outlining legislation he plans to introduce when Congress reconvenes next month, Sanders…
Federal agencies have done a commendable job of eliminating the use of Social Security numbers wherever possible, according to a new report by the President’s Identity Theft Task Force. The Social Security Administration no longer uses the nine-digit code — the holy grail for identity thieves — on personnel forms for its own employees. The Defense Department is removing Social Security numbers from military ID cards. And the IRS only lists the last four digits on all federal tax lien documents. But the nation’s counties have been slower to react. An astonishing 85 percent of the largest counties make records…