The Center for Effective Government (formerly OMB Watch) ceased operations as of March 2016. The majority of work and materials has been passed on to the Project On Government Oversight (POGO). This site is being maintained as an archive of materials produced.
Sen. Carper's (D-DE) Homeland Security and Government Affairs Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security is scheduled to hold a hearing this Thursday, Sept. 24, on the use of performance information within federal agency decision-making processes.
A new report by GAO on Uncle-Sam-dependent AIG finds that the insurance giant is "stabilizing" due to the $182 billion in financial assistance from the Treasury Department and the Fed. However, the "the ultimate success of AIG’s restructuring and repayment efforts remains uncertain."
National Journal (subscription required) is reporting today that the House plans on taking up stopgap legislation on Wednesday to continue funding the federal government after appropriations for the year run out on Sept. 30.
Back when the Recovery Board released the Recovery.gov redesign contract, many in the transparency community were upset at the extent to which the General Services Administration redacted the contract. While we certainly expected General Services Administration (GSA) - the agency which conducts most of the federal government's procurement - to redact proprietary information, the document had massive swaths blacked out, including such ridiculous sections as the number of peak users and one part titled "Introduction."
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report yesterday before a House Homeland Security Subcommittee hearing on the embattled Secure Border Initiative (SBI) program - a multi-billion dollar program designed to secure the U.S. borders. A subset of that program, called SBInet is supposed to be building a fancy, virtual fence along the U.S. southern border. The program, begun during the Bush administration, has consistently been behind schedule and over budget - and that's when the new technologies have worked at all. And now it looks like Congress may want to cancel the program altogether.
I should mention that the first conference – sponsored by the New America Foundation on Tuesday – discussed the merits of short-term deficit spending in the midst of a recession, while the second academic panel – held yesterday and sponsored by the Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform – discussed the mountainous mid- to long-term debt anticipated with the looming entitlement crisis. The distinction is important, yet often lost in discussions of deficits and debt.
The recently coordinated Southwest Asia Joint Planning Group, comprised of several Inspectors General and a representative of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), came before a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee hearing last week to testify on the oversight of U.S. resources in Afghanistan and Pakistan. To the chagrin of the subcommittee, though, the assembly of government overseers provided no overarching strategy to combat waste, fraud, and abuse, and little in the way of proactive solutions to help prevent the future squandering of U.S. resources. It is debatable, of course, whether it was fair for the subcommittee to expect as much.
There is an interesting article ($) in CQ this morning about a possible change in forecasting techniques used by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, announced on Monday that CBO would likely provide cost estimates for the forthcoming Senate health care reform bill beyond the standard 10-year budget window - extending that window to 20 years.
