Appropriations
How Would Enhanced Rescission Authority Affect the Budget Process?
Jun 2, 2010
The Obama administration recently caused considerable controversy when it sent a proposal to Capitol Hill on May 24 asking for enhanced authority to cut spending already approved by Congress. Fiscal hawks like Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) hailed the president’s proposal for "enhanced rescission authority" as "an important tool to target wasteful spending," while congressional appropriators from both parties argued that the proposal would give the president too much power over the spending process. Questions remain about the proposal's potential effects on deficit reduction.
GAO: Recovery Act Reporting Getting Better, But Still Room for Improvement
Jun 2, 2010
When Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act) in early 2009, the legislation's transparency provisions represented a significant step forward for government openness. While select agencies and programs have been using recipient reporting for years, the Recovery Act represented the first time such reporting had been attempted across all agencies at once and presented to the public online. Thus, bumps in the road toward transparency and accountability, including data quality problems, were inevitable. A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report shows that while there are fewer reporting errors as time passes, there is still room for improvement in both data quality and implementation details.
read in fullWho Says We Need More C-17s...Oh Yeah, Congressional Missourians Do
May 26, 2010 by Gary Therkildsen*
As Congress gears up for its annual budget process, parochial-minded members are drawing their customary battle lines around administration-targeted programs. One of those is the C-17 transport plane, which the Pentagon has been trying to kill for several years because it deems the military to have ample airlift capacity. Last week, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch highlighted a press conference held by four congressional Missourians who, claiming to know better than the Pentagon, declared that they were going to fight the plane's proposed cancellation.
read in fullObama Requests Tool for the Wrong Job
May 24, 2010 by Craig Jennings
President Obama has proposed to Congress "a new, expedited tool to reduce unnecessary or wasteful spending," lining up on the side of so-called fiscal conservatives to enhance the Executive's ability to force Congress to vote on measures that cut federal spending.
read in fullRecovery.gov Moves to Cloud Computing
May 14, 2010 by Sam Rosen-Amy
In his latest Chairman's Corner, Recovery Board Chairman Earl Devaney announced that Recovery.gov is now the first "government-wide" cloud computing system. Sounds impressive, right? Well, sort of. Essentially, this means that Recovery.gov, which used to be housed on servers operated by the Board and used solely for that purpose, is now hosted on "cloud" servers run by Amazon.com.
Obama to Ask for 'Enhanced Rescission Authority'
May 11, 2010 by Gary Therkildsen*
Over the weekend, rumors began trickling out of the administration that President Obama will soon send to Congress a proposal to grant the president greater authority to cut spending out of enacted appropriations bills, called enhanced recession authority. In a Congressional Quarterly article (subscription), which ran on Friday, and a Bureau of National Affairs piece (subscription), which appeared yesterday, an unnamed administration source states that the White House will send the proposal to Capitol Hill before Memorial Day.
read in fullNew Recovery Act Memo Comes as Recipients Improve Reporting
May 5, 2010 by Sam Rosen-Amy
On Tuesday, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a new guidance on Recovery Act recipient reporting. The memo expands on several earlier memos on the same topic, but it lays out more concrete steps for agencies to follow.
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Treasury Begins to Sell Citigroup Stock
Apr 27, 2010 by Sam Rosen-Amy
As discussed in a recent Watcher article, Treasury is starting to divest itself of Citigroup assets. The news came out on Monday, with Citi's stock price at $4.86, but at the close on Tuesday, the price had plunged to below $4.40 a share.
read in fullCommentary: The Rocky Path toward a Budget Resolution
Apr 20, 2010
Regardless of which party is in power, springtime in the nation's capital always means one thing: budget debates. After the president submits his budget proposal in February, Congress has until April 15 to pass a budget resolution, a non-binding plan for the spending and revenue levels that congressional appropriations committees are to follow when creating the spending bills for the coming fiscal year. However, in election years, members of Congress are reluctant to go on record as increasing the federal budget deficit, especially since budget resolutions are not absolutely necessary to fund the federal government.
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