Browsing: Congress

Faux newsman and comedian Stephen Colbert will appear before a House Judiciary Committee hearing tomorrow on illegal immigrants and farm labor. The details are kind of sketchy, but there are some reports that Colbert will testify in his on-screen character of a blustery conservative pundit. Now, I am a card-carrying member of the Colbert Nation, but this is a bad idea all around. And it shows just how broken Congress is, and how far the quality of hearings has fallen. I’ve covered Washington since 2002, and they seem to get worse and worse each year. It’s an open secret in…

After more than two years as acting U.S.  Comptroller General–a job that entails leading the Government Accountability Office-Gene Dodaro got the nod today from President Obama for a long-term appointment to the post. In a release, Obama said he intends to nominate Dodaro, a 37-year GAO veteran, for the position of Comptroller General. Dodaro has held the job on a provisional basis since March 2008; in a statement today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said that she, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and a bipartisan congressional commission recommended Dodaro for the 15-year appointment. “As the comptroller general, Gene Dodaro…

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., sounds like he’s feeling a little unappreciated for helping pass a tax cut last year as part of the stimulus. From his comments today at a NARFE luncheon in Bowie, Md.: How many of you know that a third of the recovery act was a tax cut? $260 billion of the $780 [billion] was a tax cut. It was a tax cut that not many people really [said], “Oh, I got a tax cut!” The reason is because it was about $20, $25 a week extra in their take-home pay. The reason it was…

It’s deja vu all over again. A Democratic president comes to Washington, runs up against rabid hostility from the GOP, and faces serious trouble in his first midterm elections. Sound familiar yet? It gets better. Some Republicans are openly advocating shutting down the government as part of a gambit to gut the health care reform bill passed earlier this year. Joe Miller, Alaska’s Republican candidate for Senate and tea party favorite, said in an interview that he wants to quash health care reform and other “socialist aspects of government,” such as Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements. Fairbanks’ Daily News-Miner…

Reuters reports that former NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe and his son survived the plane crash that killed former Sen. Ted Stevens last night. The Washington Post’s obituary for Stevens is online here. And President Obama just released the following statement: A decorated World War II veteran, Senator Ted Stevens devoted his career to serving the people of Alaska and fighting for our men and women in uniform. Michelle and I extend our condolences to the entire Stevens family and to the families of those who perished alongside Senator Stevens in this terrible accident.

Former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and former NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe are believed to have been aboard a plane that crashed in southwest Alaska last night, according to the Associated Press. O’Keefe is chief executive officer of defense contractor EADS North America. EADS told the AP that O’Keefe was on board the plane. Friends of Stevens think he was a passenger as well, according to the Anchorage Daily News. The Alaska National Guard said there are possible fatalities in the crash, but Stevens’ and O’Keefe’s conditions are currently unknown. UPDATE: The National Transportation Safety Board says nine people were aboard,…

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, last Thursday introduced the latest bill seeking to cap the federal workforce. But the press release announcing the Reduce and Cap the Federal Workforce Act is so riddled with bad numbers and misinformation that it requires some straightening out. Here are the stats Hatch cites as proof that the federal government “is growing at breakneck speed”: From 1981 through 2008, the senator noted, civilian workers numbered between 1.1 million and 1.2 million. The Obama administration is forecasting the government’s workforce this year will reach 2.15 million and serve 310 million Americans. “That is almost a fifty…

The water metaphors were flowing at yesterday’s Senate Budget Committee hearing on federal contracting. In his opening statement, Office of Federal Procurement Policy administrator Dan Gordon mentioned the massive growth in government contracting over the last decade. He said that acquisition workers “couldn’t cope with this tsunami of buying that was taking place.” Not to be outdone, Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse later said that “more than half a trillion dollars a year and climbing is clearly a geyser of taxpayer funds that needs to be carefully watched.” Either way, it sounds like taxpayers are taking a bath.

Phony e-mails are being sent to news organizations claiming that Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has passed away. Don’t buy it — Leahy is still alive and kicking. My Army Times colleague Rick Maze says that the Senate’s IT department is now trying to track down the source of the fraudulent e-mails. Politico reports that the Capitol Police are also investigating the e-mails, which were “spoofed” to look like they came from Leahy’s office and claimed Leahy died of liver cancer. Politico said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., also were erroneously reported dead by fake e-mails. Sen.…

NPR’s Planet Money blog has a cute little rundown of federal agencies that have changed their names in the past, prompted by the Minerals Management Service’s rebranding as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (try to say that acronym three times fast). This sort of thing intrigues me so I Googled around a bit and found a nice list on Wikipedia of defunct federal agencies. Anyone remember the Board of Tea Appeals (which apparently hung around until 1996, somehow?!)? How about the Board of Economic Warfare? The Federal Theatre Project? Oh, for the days when a fed…

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