The Office of Management and Budget wants Congress to reconsider a proposal to reduce how much contractors can charge the government for their executives’ compensation, an amount that is currently “unjustified and unnecessary,” the federal procurement chief said in a blog post this morning. Under federal cost reimbursement contracts, agencies pay contractors for incurred costs, including salaries for executives and other employees. These costs usually show up in the overhead rates that contractors set. OMB caps how much contractors can charge the government for executive compensation based on what top private sector executives earn. Contractors can currently ask the government to reimburse up to $693,951 for each of its top…
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A cap on how much contractors can charge the government for their top execs would be extended to all defense contract employees as part of the agreement reached by House and Senate leaders for the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. Currently, contractors can seek reimbursement for the compensation — wages, salary, bonuses and deferred compensation — of each of the company’s top five executives. Legislation now proposed for the 2012 NDAA would extend that cap, which is now at $693,951, to all employees that work on a contract or are included in the overhead costs of a contract. The Defense Department could…
Happy Friday! FedLine couldn’t let the week end without noting that the Congressional Research Service has a new permanent director. After serving as CRS’ acting chief since April, Mary Mazanec got the nod Monday from James Billington, the Librarian of Congress. Mazanec replaces Daniel Mulhollan, who retired. “Dr. Mazanec has advanced degrees in law and medicine and brings a breadth of experience that will be valuable in leading CRS and ensuring that CRS continues to provide comprehensive and objective research and analysis that meets the needs of [members of Congress] and staff,” Billington said in a news release. Mazanec previously worked at the…
Government contractors who blow the whistle on improper use of federal dollars or unethical behavior would be protected against retaliation under a bill introduced by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. Recent laws that extend protections to some contractors have created a patchwork of inadequate protections, McCaskill, chairwoman of the Senate Contracting Oversight Subcommittee, said during a hearing Tuesday. For example, whistleblower provisions added for defense contractor employees in 2008 do not protect contractors from retaliation by a government official nor does it cover subcontractors. Senate Bill 241 would extend whistleblower protections to all government contractors and subcontractors, and consolidate some of…
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., expects the Senate to vote on cybersecurity legislation during its first work period of 2012. In a Nov. 16 letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Reid said that bipartisan committees have been negotiating potential language in a cyber bill for the past six months, but those efforts haven’t produced results. Reid said if the working groups cannot agree on bipartisan legislation by early next year, he will welcome legislation produced “elsewhere” to be debated on the Senate floor. For now, the 2012 legislative session is scheduled to begin Jan. 23. Could that bill include…
You know things are getting bad when even fictional jobs are no longer safe. Congress was given until Oct. 14 to make recommendations to the Super Committee tasked with finding at least 1.2 trillion in savings over the next 10 years. What Congress sent their way was a veritable cornucopia of suggestions ranging from cuts to the federal workforce to opening up federal land to oil drilling. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia offered a wide array of possible spending cuts – including…
Well, this could get interesting. Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is contemplating major changes to the Hatch Act, the law that generally bars federal employees from on-the-job partisan politicking. At a hearing this afternoon, Issa didn’t say what kind of alterations he believes are needed, but labeled the status quo “clear as mud.” In a brief interview afterward, he drew distinctions in how the law affects the president and vice president; Cabinet officers and political appointees; and the career federal workforce. All three layers, Issa said, could need “multiple rounds”…
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…
Well, chalk one up for congressional bipartisanship: Democrats and Republicans alike agree that lawmakers should have a say in the Obama administration’s government streamlining agenda. “Reorganization of the executive branch is a shared responsibility,” Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., the respective chairs of the main House and Senate government oversight committees, said in a Friday letter to Jeffrey Zients, one of the White House management officials leading the effort. Issa and Lieberman go on to ask for “a tentative timeline for development and implementation of the reorganization proposal, as well as regular updates during the review.”…
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…