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  Senate Bill Would Give President Obama Authority to Pull the Plug on Your Internet Dr. Mercola November 3, 2009   CNET News has obtained a summary of a proposal from Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) that would create an Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor, part of the Executive Office of the President. That office would receive ...

The effort to expand domestic benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees took another step forward Wednesday when a House committee advanced legislation to do just that. After sometimes heated debate, the 23 to 12 vote in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee broke down along party lines, with the victorious Democrats arguing that the measure is a matter of ...

By unanimous consent, the Senate on Thursday passed legislation (S. 806) to stabilize the funding and management of Federal Executive Boards, which coordinate the actions of federal offices outside the Washington area. "President Kennedy showed great foresight when he called for the coordination of federal agencies' activities in 1961, and FEBs have done a good job since then in coordinating their ...

Remember when President Obama said he wanted to make working for the federal government cool again? The government's chief human resources officer told lawmakers Thursday that they need to approve a bill that extends full benefits to the same-sex domestic partners of gay or lesbian federal employees in order to ensure the government's coolness factor. “Young people are looking at this ...

Is David Letterman to blame for the lack of diversity at the Department of Homeland Security? The talk show host's recent admission of trysts with women who worked for him, a Republican lawmaker said Wednesday, has provoked not outrage among his fans and the media, but rather a sense of reluctant acceptance. And Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) suggested that such a ...

The Senate was moving closer to passage of the $636.3 billion fiscal 2010 Defense Appropriations bill Thursday night, although a long list of amendments awaiting consideration and votes will push a final vote on the measure to Tuesday at the earliest. During floor debate, the chamber approved an amendment offered by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., that requires the Missile Defense Agency ...

Citing the ongoing economic crisis and a ballooning federal budget, President Obama announced he would use his authority to set a 2 percent pay raise for federal employees starting in January 2010. The proposal angered employee groups and lawmakers who have pushed for pay parity between civilians and members of the military, who are slated to receive a 3.4 percent raise ...

Civil servants are no longer in danger of being forced off the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program under the Senate Finance Committee's version of health care reform legislation. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, agreed to scale back a proposal that would have required all federal employees to move from FEHBP to state-based health exchanges so it applied only to members of Congress ...

The House last week overwhelmingly passed legislation that supporters say will save money for thousands of federal retirees facing a potential increase in their Medicare Part B premiums. The 2009 Medicare Premium Fairness Act would affect many retirees under the Civil Service Retirement System, who do not receive Social Security payments since CSRS was designed to be equivalent to the Social ...

HARRISBURG, Pa. – Gov. Ed Rendell and legislative leaders reached a budget deal Friday to end Pennsylvania's distinction as the last state still fighting over its annual spending plan.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The House passed a bill Tuesday to let the struggling U.S. Postal Service cover a budget shortfall by reducing its annual payment to a health care fund for retirees by $4 billion. Under current law the Postal Service is required to transfer $5.4 billion to the Retiree Health Benefits Fund by Sept. 30, the end of the budget ...

A coalition of 36 labor unions have rejected a Senate provision to repeal the Pentagon's National Security Personnel System, claiming that it wouldn't do enough to ensure that employees are paid fairly. The language, included in the Senate's 2010 Defense authorization bill (S. 1390), would eliminate the NSPS within a year. But it also would give the Defense Department the opportunity ...

The people who protect airline passengers by stopping guns, knives and hijackers from getting on planes moved a step closer to securing the civil service protections they have long been denied with legislation approved Thursday by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The Transportation Workforce Enhancement Act, approved on a 19-to-10 party-line vote, would allow some 60,000 Transportation Security ...

As Congress returns from a not-so-relaxing August recess, health care reform tops the legislative to-do list. But lawmakers also face several pieces of legislation affecting the federal workforce, which were left unresolved at the end of July. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Thursday will consider H.R. 1881, a bill that would eliminate the Transportation Security Administration's special pay ...

The government is developing a comprehensive database that will track the performance of federal contractors, according to a proposed rule published Thursday in the Federal Register. Click here to read the proposed rule The Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System, which the General Services Administration will maintain, will integrate a handful of existing databases with new information provided by contracting ...