Monday federal headlines – September 22, 2014

The Federal Headlines is a daily compilation of the stories you hear discussed on Federal News Radio each day. It is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com reade...

The Federal Headlines is a daily compilation of the stories you hear discussed on the Federal Drive and In Depth radio shows each day. Our headlines are updated twice per day — once in the morning and once in the afternoon — with the latest news affecting federal employees and contractors.

  • Army Chief Gen. Ray Odierno said sequestration in fiscal 2016 would significantly degrade the Army’s ability to carry out its mission. He said the scheduled $9 billion reduction would be a breaking point. He told the Washington writers group, he’s not seeing peace break out around the world as the U.S. military shrinks. Personnel costs represent 46 percent of the Army’s budget. Odierno said, because it takes time to reduce headcount, budget cuts have to come from training and modernization. The active Army is now 510,000 soldiers, down from a high of 570,000. It will be 420,000 by fiscal 2017. At that level, Odierno said the Army would be unable to execute its current strategy. (Defense Department)
  • The Army is speeding up efforts to get troops to Africa to help with the ebola epidemic. Chief of Staff Ray Odierno said thousands will be shipping out over the next 30 days. President Barack Obama authorized up to 3,000 troops to set up hospitals and train Africans to treat the virus. A small team went ahead to Liberia. Odierno said its initial assessment showed the disease accelerating faster than officials first thought. The Army hasn’t identified the units to be sent to Africa. But Odierno said that before they go, they’ll need training to operate in the ebola environment, including their own health and safety. (Associated Press)
  • A Senate-passed bill would end uncertainty about overtime pay at Customs and Border Protection. The Border Patrol Pay Reform Act would eliminate administratively uncontrollable overtime. That’s the extra pay agents get when working beyond their shift so they can complete pursuits of illegal border crossers. GovExec reports, the average agent would lose pay. But their union supports the bill because it simplifies things. Border Patrol agents would choose 80, 90 or 100 hours of work each two weeks. At 100 hours, they’d receive a bump in pay but no overtime. Instead, they would receive compensatory time off. (GovExec)
  • Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) continued his crusade to reform the security clearance process. The Senate passed the second in a series of bills. The latest one would prohibit security clearance contractors from doing final quality control checks on their own work. It’s aimed squarely at USIS, the contractor that was fired earlier this month by the Office of Management and Budget. An earlier bill became law. It gave the Office of Personnel Management more authority to investigate background checks. A third bill hasn’t come to a vote. That one would bar further work by anyone found to have compromised a background check. (Senate)
  • The chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee wants investigators to look at another location when it comes to delayed care at VA hospitals. Military.com reports, Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) urged them to expand their efforts to VA headquarters in Washington. Miller said so far the emphasis has been on what schedulers, managers and executives out in the field may have known. He wants to know whether top officials in Washington knew about the widespread wait time fraud and when they knew about it. (Military.com)
  • The Food and Drug Administration is revising its food safety rules proposed last year. This is after farmers complained that the regulations could hurt business. The new proposals would relax water quality standards and allow farmers to produce crops sooner after using raw manure as fertilizer. The rules are new territory for the agency, according to Michael Taylor, FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods. He said the agency is trying to “achieve the goal of food safety in a practical way.” The new proposal would have a 75-day comment period and the final rules are due in 2015. (Associated Press)
  • A project dating to midway in the George W. Bush administration is still raging in Congress. It’s deciding whether to proceed with a new Homeland Security Department headquarters at the St. Elizabeths site in southeast Washington. Of the large scale plan, only the Coast Guard has moved into a new building there. House Republicans urge DHS and its general contractor, the General Services Administration, to find something else. Senate Democrats still support the St. Es location. They said a consolidated location would help DHS carry out its mission and it would save money in the long run. (Federal News Radio)

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