Friday Morning Federal Newscast – July 8th

The Morning Federal Newscast is a daily compilation of the stories you hear Federal Drive hosts Tom Temin and Amy Morris discuss throughout the show each day. The Newscast is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com users more information about the stories you hear on the air.

• The White House thinks federal agencies spend too much on management support contracts. It’s calling on agencies to reduce support services spending by 15 percent next year. That move will save $6 billion. The latest rollback is part of the administration’s Cut Government Waste program. It’s spearheaded by Jeff Zients, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. And Dan Gordon, Administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. They say spending on management support services has grown faster than any other contracting over the last ten years. It reached $40 billion in fiscal 2010. Agencies are already under orders to make inventories of their management support spending, so they’ll know where to begin cutting.
• William J. Lynn III is stepping down as the Defense Department’s deputy secretary. He promises the new secretary, Leon Panetta, he’ll stay on until Panetta chooses his own deputy. Lynn joined the Pentagon in 1993. Before that, he worked for Senator Edward Kennedy as liaison to the Armed Services Committee. As deputy secretary, Lynn helped create new policies for space, energy and cyber security. Those policies have spawned the new U.S. Cyber Command and a drive to find alternate energy sources. A defense analyst tells AP, possible successors to Lynn are policy chief Michele Flournoy, or acquisition and technology chief Ashton Carter.
• Two senator call for progress reports on the government’s efforts to get rid of unneeded or underused property. Tom Carper of Delaware and Rob Portman of Ohio have sent a letter to multiple agencies requesting status updates. They want agencies to describe their property and management efforts over the last five years. They also want information on strategies agencies are using to reduce property costs. The requests are part of the government’s ongoing property reform efforts. Federal asset management falls under the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, which Carper chairs and Portman is a member.
• House lawmakers want to trim agency budgets by six percent next year. 2012 funding bills from the Appropriations Committee also include a six percent cut for operating the Legislative Branch. Funding would be down 13 percent in the Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill for 2012. Cuts are not across the board, though. NextGov reports, The Veteran’s Affairs committee agreed to all of VA’s $3.1 billion request for information technology.
• JP Morgan Chase and Company has agreed to pay $228 million to settle a Justice Department case involving municipal bonds. Justice charged former JP Morgan employees with rigging bids for the bond investments of several cities and states. By agreeing to reimburse the affected cities, JP Morgan admits responsibility for those activities. In May, USB AG agreed to a $160 million settlement under the same investigation.
• The FDA has picked up the pace on drug approvals. The agency has already approved twenty new drugs this year. It approved twenty one in all of last year. The Wall Street Journal reports it is on pace to approve more new drugs than in recent years. Yet the agency is under fire from the pharmaceutical industry for an overly-strict approval process. The FDA says drug companies face high failure rates during the trial phase rather than in the approval process.
• The Homeland Security Department has published its latest Southwest Border policy for the fight against drug and weapons trafficking. The strategy calls for increased coordination and information sharing among Federal, and state and local law enforcement agencies. It also calls for stronger collaboration with Mexico in its fight against the drug cartels. The Obama administration’s Southwest Border initiative has increased the number of Border Patrol agents to more than 20,000.
• With its last Shuttle flight scheduled for later this morning, NASA is already looking towards the future. The Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral has found some work for its work force, soon to be surplus. They’ll provide launch and post-flight technical assistance to a Nevada company, Sierra Nevada Space Systems. The company has developed a reusable spacecraft called Dream Chaser. It’s in the running to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. Sierra Nevada already has agreements with NASA’s Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston and two other locations. The Dream Chaser looks like a shrunken version of the Shuttle.

MORE NEWS LINKS:

House presses ahead to complete $649B defense bill

Figures on government spending and debt

THIS AFTERNOON ON FEDERAL NEWS RADIO

Coming up today on In Depth with Francis Rose:
Federal News Radio’s Jared Serbu steps into the anchor chair while Francis Rose enjoys vacation. On today’s show, the amount of time it takes to hire a new fed in half. But one government group says that’s still not fast enough. But don’t worry they’ve got a solution. And, you might be the weakest link when it comes to cybersecurity. Hear the do’s and don’ts from a cyber expert. Join Jared from 3 to 7 p.m. on 1500AM or listen on your computer.

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