Posts Tagged: Congress

5 Ways to Help Your Congressional Liaison

Originally post at Federal Communicators Network. Sign up for their newsletter! It’s free and it will make you more popular. I’d like to introduce you to someone: your agency’s Congressional Liaison. She might have any of a variety of phrases in her title, such as “Legislative Specialist” or “Intergovernmental Affairs,” but I’ll just call herRead… Read more »

Congress Averts a Gov Shutdown – Plus the DorobekINSIDER 7 Stories

On GovLoop Insights’ DorobekINSIDER: The headlines surrounding sequestration have slowed down, but that doesn’t mean its gone away for feds. In fact, the effects of sequestration are piling up at agencies. The Partnership for Public Service has tips to balancing your work and sequestration. Click here for the full recap. What’s the biggest challenge facingRead… Read more »

Funding the Government: What’s Moving and What’s Not

Originally posted at the Government Affairs Institute The continuing resolution (CR) that passed in the House on March 6 was expected to easily pass in the Senate last week (wait a minute; did I just say “easily pass in the Senate”?). Both bills would fund the government at sequester level spending through September 30. TheRead… Read more »

Sequestration and the Ulysses Solution

I wanted to share this recent post by my colleague Mark Nadel at the Government Affairs Institute who shares an interesting point about government leadership in difficult situations: “when individual desire is about to trump the common good, the decision maker must tie his hands behind his back to avoid disastrous results.” There are aRead… Read more »

Congress on Course to Extend Expiring Continuing Resolution

Originally posted at The Government Affairs Institute Both chambers remain on course to pass a largely uncontroversial extension of the expiring continuing resolution (CR) that will be comprised of an omnibus and probably five out of the 12 individual appropriations bills. It will set FY13 discretionary spending at $984b, equal to the sequester level, butRead… Read more »

Congress BUILDs Support for Local Revitalization

Every city has them, the unusable old buildings and empty lots that remain cut off from the public sphere. They’re former factories or disposal areas where hazardous substances, pollutants, or other contaminant is hanging around for one reason or another. They’re undeveloped, contaminated, usually abandoned, and they’re a thorn in the side of any communityRead… Read more »

What’s Up Next?: Continuing Resolution

Yesterday the House passed a six-month FY13 continuing resolution (CR) that maintains sequester level spending for the remainder of the fiscal year, but provides appropriations to Defense and Milcon-VA. The measure, HR 933, passed by a vote of 267-151, would extend the federal pay freeze but grants military personnel a 1.7 percent pay increase. ItRead… Read more »

3 Reasons to Cut Congressional Pay in Half

The U.S. Congress has done it again. On Friday the House of Representatives voted to reject a long overdue end to the two-year old federal pay freeze. In effect, Congress is punishing federal civil servants for serving the public. It should be evident by now that federal employees have been castigated too much, for tooRead… Read more »

CBO Projection A Bit of Good Budget News, Sort Of

Having barely avoided falling off the fiscal cliff on January 1, we soon found ourselves sliding down a slippery slope toward a dark and gloomy abyss. The sequester was postponed for only two months, the debt ceiling was raised, but only until May, and we continue to hurtle toward the March 27 expiration of theRead… Read more »

We the People vs the Original One Percent

“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal,” but what happens thereafter is subject to circumstance. When it comes to the concept of the “One Percent,” which emerged in the collective consciousness out of the Occupy Movement, perhaps for the words “all men” and “equal” are nuanced terms. In theRead… Read more »