FederalDaily - September 27, 2005
Senate Approves Military/VA Funding
Last week the full Senate approved the fiscal year 2006 Military Construction
and Veterans Affairs Appropriations bill by a vote of 98-0. Highlights of the
$82.98 billion bill include:
- $4.9 billion for active duty construction;
- $1 million for Guard and Reserve construction;
- $1 billion for barracks construction;
- $223.8 million for hospitals and medical/dental facilities;
- $1.9 billion to fully fund family housing construction and
construction improvements;
- $23.3 billion for Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical
services (an amount $1.3 billion above the president’s
request);
- $1.45 billion for a new VA information technology office;
and
- $412 million for medical and prosthetic research.
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FDA Commissioner Resigns
On Friday Lester Crawford announced his resignation as Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) commissioner. He resigned only months after being in the position. In
response to the resignation, Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Committee
on Finance, made the following statement: “The FDA has demonstrated a
too-cozy relationship with the pharmaceutical industry and an attitude of shielding
rather than disclosing information. The opportunity to name a new commissioner
is a chance to take the agency in a necessary new direction.” Many Democrats
had similar responses.
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Study of Soldiers’ Demographics
The pace of military operations, thousands of casualties in ongoing military
operations, and the services’ recruiting challenges have raised questions
about who is serving in the military and concern that certain subgroups of
the U.S. population may be disproportionately represented among those fighting
and dying in support of the war on terrorism, a new Government Accountability
Office (GAO) report said. GAO reported that the military is younger than the
civilian work force. Also, as of December 2004, the military had proportionately
fewer whites, partly because the military has proportionately more African
Americans. Further, the representation of women in the military, at 16 percent,
is below that of women in the U.S. work force, at 48 percent. As of May 28,
2005 , 1,841 servicemembers had died and 12,658 had been wounded in support
of Operations Iraqi Freedom or Enduring Freedom. Among those who died, 71 percent
were white, 10 percent were Hispanic, and 9 percent were African American.
For more on this story, see the upcoming Oct. 3, 2005 , issue of Federal Employees
News Digest. To subscribe, click here.
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A New Federal Department?
Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., last week introduced legislation that would elevate
the current federally-funded Institute of Peace to a cabinet-level department,
dedicated to the study and development of policies to promote peace and expand
human rights. Dayton’s Department of Peace and Nonviolence Act is the
Senate counterpart to House legislation, H.R. 3760, which was introduced by
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, with 59 co-sponsors. In addition to making it
a cabinet department, Dayton’s legislation would expand the focus of
the Institute of Peace, which was established by President Reagan in 1984,
to include domestic issues. The Department of Peace and Nonviolence would serve
as a preventive counterpart to the Department of State and the Department of
Defense. The Department of Peace’s budget would be $8 billion annually,
equivalent to 2 percent of total defense spending, Dayton said.
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