Monday federal headlines – February 2, 2015

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.

  • President Barack Obama sends his 2016 budget proposal to Congress today. It bursts through spending caps while proposing big tax hikes. The $4 trillion proposal includes nearly a half trillion dollars for public works. That would be paid for by a tax on overseas profits of U.S. corporations. The budget anticipates a deficit of $474 billion in fiscal 2016. The administration’s long term projections show deficits steadily rising to nearly $700 billion dollars in 2025. The plan has already drawn fire from congressional Republicans. (Federal News Radio)
  • The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plans to release data on physician payment records each year. The Wall Street Journal reports the move will give public access to how tens of billions of dollars are spent each year and on whom. The government has kept Medicare payment data secret since 1979. But Dow Jones and Company challenged that policy in court. A federal judge ruled in the company’s favor in March. That opened up records for fiscal 2012. Now CMS says it will update the data annually. The release is opposed by the American Medical Association because of patient privacy issues. (Wall Street Journal)
  • The Office of Personnel Management has raised the ante for the Federal Agency Skills Team. The interagency task force has until June to come up with a list of skills for which the federal government has too few employees. Then it will have to develop a strategy for filling the so-called skills gap. OPM wants the task force to establish a standard and repeatable methodology to identify and fix skills gaps governmentwide. The team was established after a 2011 GAO report. It’s made up of people from several agencies with experience in HR planning and data analysis.
    ( Federal News Radio)
  • Two Republican senators introduce a bill to limit the number of senior executives in the Veterans Affairs Department eligible for bonuses. It’s a companion bill to one already introduced to the House by Veterans Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.). The Senate version is sponsored by Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) with backing from Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.). It would let VA pay bonuses to no more than 30 percent of SES members in a given year. It would require the VA secretary to reassign senior execs every five years so they are no longer supervising the same people. It would also sharply cut the time an executive in trouble could remain on paid administrative leave. (GovExec )
  • The Marine Corps plans to spend big time on recruitment advertising. It awards J. Walter Thompson of Atlanta a $770 million contract for five years worth of work. The first task order is for nearly $66 million and runs through December 2015. The Marine Corps put out a request for competitive bids, but J Walter Thompson was the only bidder. (DoD)

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