Nobody can say that the Government Printing Office lacks a sense of humor. After FedLine blogged White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ joke yesterday about sending the federal budget to Kinko’s — now called FedEx Office — GPO today said it will send Gibbs his own Kinko’s card. Technically, it’s a GPOExpress card. Those cards allow federal employees to place a small-scale printing order at any FedEx Office branch and net the government up to 70 percent off of the cost. Public Printer Bob Tapella, who runs the agency, said GPOExpress has helped feds place more than 40,000 printing orders since…
Browsing: budget
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs appeared to announce a new outsourcing initiative at today’s press conference: MR. GIBBS: I’m not going to get into details and specifics on a budget that will be released at a later day. Q: It’s at the printers? MR. GIBBS: And when it comes back from Kinko’s, we’ll be able to talk about it. It’s not really at Kinko’s, though, I was just — go ahead. That sound you just heard was the Government Printing Office having a collective heart attack. Who knows what would happen to them if the White House actually started sending an intern down…
The House will take up a continuing resolution this week to keep agencies operating at fiscal 2009 levels while Congress completes the 12 annual appropriations bills, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced Sept. 17. The CR will not come up before Wednesday, according to the tentative House floor schedule. A final vote has not been scheduled, so it’s unclear if the CR will be finished this week. The House has passed all 12 of its fiscal 2010 appropriations bills, while the Senate has passed six. The end of the fiscal year is Sept. 30, and agencies have adapted to the…
I’ve done a fair amount of reporting on the FDA’s budgetary troubles over the last 18 months. The agency is chronically underfunded, with a rapidly-growing workload and a budget that has fallen 12 percent since 2002. But apparently that isn’t the only problem, according to a new report (pdf) from the GAO: FDA could not provide data showing its workload and accomplishments in some areas, such as its review of reports identifying potential safety issues with specific medical products. Without such information, FDA cannot develop complete and reliable estimates of its resource needs. If I’m reading this right, the problem…
Deadline day around here and things are a bit busy, but I wanted to comment on an FDA appropriations hearing I covered this morning. The agency is getting a huge boost in the president’s 2010 budget proposal — $511 million, or 19 percent. Much of that money will pay for more than 1,200 new hires. That means a 30 percent staffing boost over two years, when you include the 1,500 new employees hired this year. The numbers prompted some back-and-forth with legislators, as you might expect. A few Republicans thought they were too large; Democrats hinted they might be too…
Okay, maybe not the best metaphor, since it’s been raining all day in Washington. Nonetheless: In the next five days, the Obama administration is probably going to release a more detailed 2010 budget proposal, its cybersecurity review, and the details of the bank “stress tests.” Busy week. The details of the stress tests have been slowly leaking out — Citigroup and Bank of America both need more capital — and it’s an open secret that the cybersecurity review will call for a big White House role in cybersecurity. But it will be interesting to dig into the specifics. And, of…
Many newspaper editorial pages were skeptical about the president’s call for $100 million in spending cuts at federal agencies. Maybe they had good reason: The Homeland Security Department is dropping some newspaper and magazine subscriptions to save money. The agency has told its employees to cancel subscriptions to general interest newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post and to magazines such as Newsweek and Time by April 27.
Days before he presents his first budget, President Barack Obama Tuesday night pledged to restore accountability to the budgeting process and cut outdated programs. “This budget looks ahead ten years and accounts for spending that was left out under the old rules — and for the first time, that includes the full cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. For seven years, we have been a nation at war. No longer will we hide its price,” Obama told a joint session of Congress. He added that his proposed 2010 budget will would end no-bid contracts in Iraq, as well as…
I’m at an event on economic stimulus and financial regulation sponsored by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The group is projecting a staggering $1 trillion deficit for fiscal year 2009, driven largely by the cost of reviving the slumping economy: bailouts for financial firms, diminished tax returns and an economic stimulus package. The irony is that, while government spending as a whole is skyrocketing, individual agency budgets may not see that much of an increase. That’s because much of the new spending is either handed out directly in a stimulus package — to states, businesses and taxpayers —…