Category: Congress

VHA on track to meet 2023 staffing targets, but House lawmakers urge further hiring reforms

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Ongoing recruitment challenges for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ health care workforce are gaining more attention — and concerns — from Congress. The Veterans Health Administration is on track to reach its year-end target increase for its total number of employees. But problems persist in VHA’s hiring and onboarding processes, lawmakers on the House Veterans Affairs Committee said. “We all know that this is a crisis situation. It was a crisis before COVID. It’s a bigger crisis now. And we have to treat it accordingly and work on this in…

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GOP resurrects effort to make some feds at-will employees, thus easier to fire

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Republicans have renewed their push to try to make it easier for agencies to fire federal employees. GOP lawmakers in both the House and Senate reintroduced a bill to make feds at-will workers. Proponents of the Public Service Reform Act said it would make it easier to remove poor performers, and create more accountability and efficiency. It is an idea that former President Trump originally touted through a now-revoked executive order that created the Schedule F position classification. Republicans’ new bill would also abolish the Merit Systems Protection Board. Democrat…

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Chairman McCaul threatens to hold Secretary of State Blinken in contempt of Congress

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The top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee is threatening to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress for not turning over confidential messages from career diplomats. Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said Blinken hasn’t complied with a subpoena demanding access to so-called dissent channel cables from State Department personnel during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The dissent channel serves as a forum for diplomats to critique department policy decisions. McCaul said a State Department briefing last month on the content of those cables fell short…

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More feds might soon be eligible for student-loan forgiveness

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More federal employees could see their student loans forgiven under a newly introduced bill. The bipartisan legislation would reduce eligibility requirements for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF). Currently, borrowers must be employed in public service at the time of loan forgiveness. That means retired feds and those who have left public service, but who still made all the qualifying payments, are not currently eligible for the program. The PSLF Payment Completion Fairness Act would remove this requirement. The bill was introduced in both the House and Senate. (Public…

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OPM’s dual role in talent acquisition poses ‘conflict of interest’

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The Office of Personnel Management’s advantageous stake in the talent acquisition space is raising alarm bells in Congress. As both regulator and provider of federal talent acquisition systems, OPM has an unfair advantage against other vendors, said Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the Oversight and Accountability Committee. “OPM sells hiring-related services to those agencies which it oversees via USA Staffing, even though there are many private firms that assist both the private and public sector with hiring and related human capital acquisition activities,” Comer said in a March 22…

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CBP puts forced labor statistics online for everyone to see

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Among the uglier mass human-rights violations going on in the world today, is forced labor imposed on the Uyghur minority by China. Congress, in the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, gave U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) the job of gathering and publicizing where this forced labor exists in the worldwide industrial supply chains. To find out where the agency is in addressing the issue, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with Eric Choy, the Executive Director for Trade Remedy Law Enforcement in CBP’s Office of Trade. Interview transcript: Tom…

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