Earlier this week we wrote that Moodys had announced that it is considering a downgrade of U.S. sovereign debt, this following a similar downgrade by Standard & Poor’s last year. At that time, as now, federal…
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More Trouble with U.S. Credit
It was widely reported yesterday (Tuesday, September 11) that the United States is in danger of another credit downgrade, this time by Moodys. In its press release the credit rating agency said that it would likely…
Spotlight: NIH
Which federal agency began in 1887 as the one-room “Laboratory of Hygiene” and has since grown to encompass 27 separate institutes and centers that occupy almost 16 million gross square feet of government-owned space and nearly…
Understanding the Federal Employment Trend
At last week’s Republican Convention the GOP platform was unveiled revealing the party’s plan to reduce the federal payroll by 10%, an effort we expect would be largely implemented through workforce reductions. This is nothing new.…
New Fiscal Service to Merge BPD and FMS, Move Employees from Maryland to West Virginia
As we reported in two recent Spotlight pieces, President Obama’s FY 2013 budget proposes consolidating two U.S. Department of the Treasury bureaus—the Bureau of the Public Debt (BPD) and the Financial Management Service (FMS)—into a single organization…
GSA Names Robyn to Head PBS
Acting GSA Commissioner Dan Tangherlini has picked Dorothy Robyn, deputy undersecretary of defense for installations and environment at the Department of Defense (DoD), to be the new Public Buildings Service (PBS) commissioner. Tangherlini also abolished the…
Spotlight: Bureau of the Public Debt
Which small agency within the U.S. Department of the Treasury auctions and issues more than $9 trillion in securities every year? The Bureau of the Public Debt (BPD)—under authority derived from Article I, Section 8 of…
A Look at Two Workforce Reduction Bills
With the November election approaching, the topic of federal workforce reduction looms ever larger. The Republicans unveiled their Platform last Tuesday night (August 28th) and in it asserted their desire to reduce the federal payroll by…
Labor Day and the Federal Worker
Today marks the nation’s 118th official celebration of Labor Day, established by law in 1894 when Sen. James Henderson Kyle of South Dakota introduced S. 730 to make Labor Day a federal holiday on the first…
Spotlight: NARA
Which federal agency is in charge of preserving approximately 10 billion pages of textual records; 12 million maps, charts and drawings; 25 million still photographs and graphics; 24 million aerial photographs; 300,000 reels of motion picture…