FederalDaily - June 16, 2005
Senators Urge Administration to Meet Deadlines
Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., chair and ranking
member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, sent a
letter to White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card on June 10 urging the administration
to fulfill its obligations under the National Intelligence Reform and Terrorist
Prevention Act of 2004. The senators noted a series of reports, strategic plans
and preliminary actions whose deadlines have come and gone. Among them are:
- the National Transportation Strategy;
- the first step toward streamlining the federal security clearance
process;
- a number of port security strategic plans;
- aviation security staffing standards;
- a baggage screening cost-sharing plan; and
- three reports on diplomatic initiatives to root out terrorists.
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Bill Would Stop EEOC Job Cuts
On June 14 Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, offered an amendment to the
Science, State, Justice and Commerce Appropriations bill that would prohibit
the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) from consolidating its offices
and further reducing its staff. “For FY 2006, EEOC has requested funding
for 2,400 employees, 240 less than the previous year and 500 less than 2001.
As a result of the commission's shrinking workforce, EEOC is experiencing a
tremendous case backlog,” Jones stated. Under EEOC proposals, Jones said
nine district offices will be downgraded to area offices. She added that the
average district office has 63 employees and the average area office has 18
employees.
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Protecting Soldiers Who Testify
Sens. Olympia J. Snowe, R-Maine, and John Thune, R-S.D., asked for Department
of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s assurance that no member of the
armed forces or civilian employee will be prevented from testifying before
the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission. The senators asked Rumsfeld
to permit any civilian employee or member of the armed forces to freely testify
before the commission as to the military value of any military installation,
and asked that no person who does so be discharged, demoted, suspended, threatened,
harassed or in any other manner discriminated against or punished. A bipartisan
group of 11 senators joined Snowe and Thune in signing a letter to Rumsfeld.
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Evaluating Programs for Results
Several issues, including the nation’s long-term fiscal imbalance,
drive the need to reexamine what the federal government does, how it does it,
who does it and how it gets financed, a new Government Accountability Office
(GAO) report says. One way to answer some of these questions is to use “performance
budgeting,” the GAO report suggests. Performance budgeting—or allocating
funding based on performance—can help the government’s ability
to compare competing claims for federal dollars by giving decision-makers better
information on what results programs are producing. There already exist some
performance budgeting efforts, such as the administration’s Program Assessment
Rating Tool (PART). However, GAO said it is not clear that PART has had any
significant impact on authorization, appropriations and oversight activities
to date. GAO said the process of rethinking government programs and activities
could take a generation or longer to complete.
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