Category: Congress

USPS unions, top House Democrat back bill setting harsher sentences for robbing letter carriers

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Ryan Pierani remembers getting robbed when he used to deliver pizzas. But he never expected to be robbed on the job while delivering mail and packages, as a letter carrier for the Postal Service. “When you carry cash on you, you always expect to be robbed,” Pierani, now a letter carrier in Cincinnati, Ohio, said in an interview Wednesday. “You have to be on high alert, and it happens here and there.” But Pierani wasn’t on guard, when a young man approached his USPS-marked delivery van in January 2022. He…

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For 2025 budget request, federal IT prioritizing AI, CX

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The White House is seeking the smallest increase in spending on federal civilian IT since 2013, when the technology budget actually dropped. The $ 75.1 billion request for fiscal 2025, however, isn’t pushing the same old, same old. It’s clear the Office of Management and Budget is telling agencies to make even more strategic investments in Biden administration priorities around artificial intelligence and customer experience. “The administration is focused on understanding where agencies are on their information technology (IT) modernization journeys, determining the right investments to support secure technology integration…

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Military construction budget prioritizes housing, shipyard infrastructure

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The Defense Department is slated to receive $ 2 billion for family housing, an increase of $ 30 million above the President’s budget request, to start remediating deteriorating conditions of military installations that have been plagued by mold, pests and toxic waste, among other problems.  Congressional leaders rolled out the fiscal 2024 spending “minibus” over the weekend, placing particular emphasis on funding quality-of-life programs, including improving what they have long called “substandard” and “unacceptable” living conditions of military housing facilities.  “This is disgusting, this is unsatisfactory. Would any of you want…

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What will happen now that Congress bought itself a week or two on the budget?

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It is not what contractors or most federal employees wanted, but Congress did manage to avoid a partial government shutdown last week. They only pushed the deadline out a week or two, in order to buy time to consider budget bills. For the outlook on the week ahead, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with Bloomberg Government Deputy News Director Loren Duggan. Interview Transcript:   Tom Temin  And, Loren, before all of this, of course, we have been going back and forth with the fact that the bills are out…

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The House approves a short-term extension to avoid a shutdown. Senators are up next to vote

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The House passed another short-term spending measure Thursday that would keep one set of federal agencies operating through March 8 and another set through March 22, avoiding a shutdown for parts of the federal government that would otherwise kick in Saturday. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill later in the day. The short-term extension is the fourth in recent months, and many lawmakers expect it to be the last for the current fiscal year, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, who said that negotiators had…

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Congress can’t be too concerned about the state of affairs

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Russian brutality on parade once again. No end in sight for the Middle East conflict. No federal 2024 budget and the border crisis rolls on. What a great time for Congress to take a recess. For an up-close look at what Congress has done, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with Loren Duggan, Bloomberg Government deputy news director Loren Duggan. Interview Transcript:  Loren Duggan There really is. And there are some key deadlines coming up as soon as next week and the week following that really are going to…

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