Pentagon Pushes Preferences

The Pentagon is pushing President Bush's proposal to provide federal hiring preferences for spouses of military service members. Kathleen Ott of the Pentagon’s Office of Civilian Personnel Policy has met with officials at the Office of Personnel Management to discuss the concept, Army Times reports.

The Defense Department already has a spousal preference program in place for its civilian jobs. One reason that Pentagon officials want to extend it to the rest of government is that military spouses must move frequently, and "often do not have a portable occupation which they can take with them,” Ott said. But the civilian federal government has offices all over the world.

Implementing the new hiring preferences across government probably will require legislative action, and it's unclear at this point when or if that might happen.