The Buzz

Davis' Dilemma

The White House's decision to restructure the federal personnel system for the first time in decades is putting House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., in a tough spot. Taking the leadership role in pushing the president's plan might compromise his relationship with his constituents.

So far, Davis, whose Northern Virginia district is home to more than 50,000 federal employees, has trod lightly. He has greeted with caution-but not overt criticism-the White House proposal to extend to the full bureaucracy personnel flexibilities already granted to the Homeland Security and Defense departments.

"The ink is barely dry on the new regulations at DHS. They're not yet set in at DoD," Davis said in a late February interview with CongressDaily. "We want to give people a chance to work under this, air it out." Davis said he wanted to see a more "tangible" proposal from the administration than what the Office of Management and Budget is asking for now: quick, sweeping authorizing legislation and a pledge to work out the details of implementation later.

"I know they love it, but they've got a long way to go on this one," Davis said, adding, "We're not shutting the door. We plan to keep an open dialogue with the administration."

But Davis clearly bristles at the White House notion that the reform process should begin in his committee. "The House drove this both times," he said, referring to the separate measures that enacted changes at Homeland Security and the Pentagon. "They're asking the House again to do the heavy lifting on this one."

There's a Trust Fund. Really.

So there really is a Social Security trust fund? Yup, and it sits in a file cabinet in a Treasury Department office in West Virginia, of all places, the Associated Press noted in a late February report.

In 1994, Congress required that Treasury create a "physical document in form of bond, note or certificate of indebtedness, rather than accounting entry," to document Social Security's obligations. So it did, and still does.

The bonds, which a spokesman for the Bureau of the Public Debt acknowledged were "symbolic," are held in a pair of white loose-leaf notebooks, commit the "full faith and credit" of the federal government to fulfilling future benefits commitments.

Postal Bill Comes Due

With postal rates on the way up, the White House and Congress might be in the mood to compromise on postal reform legislation.

Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Thomas Carper, D-Del., the chief proponents of last year's effort on the Hill to give the Postal Service more financial flexibility, are leaning toward backing administration requests intended to provide financial transparency, Senate aides told CongressDaily in late February.

In exchange, they said, the White House might be more flexible in allowing the Postal Service to tap a retirement escrow account that the agency contends is overfunded. The White House has opposed that approach, as well as the way the bill shifts the cost of military pensions to the Treasury Department.

The negotiations over the legislation came as the Postal Service's board took the first step toward seeking a rate increase-a process that can take close to a year. Industry experts estimate that rates will have to rise 5.5 percent to 6 percent in 2006 to cover the $3.1 billion the Postal Service is required to put into an escrow account. That was good news to large mailers, who were anticipating a double-digit rate increase proposal. But the 2006 hike could be followed by another increase to take effect in 2007.

Postal Service Chief Financial Officer Richard Strasser said he expects the agency will earn $1 billion in net income this year and break even next year. Mail volume was strong in the first quarter of fiscal 2005, due in part to catalog mailings and direct marketing by financial services companies.

ON THE RECORD: Paul J. McNulty...

...the federal prosecutor who led the government's case against former Air Force official Darleen Druyun, talked recently with George Cahlink about the new Procurement Fraud Working Group, a multiagency effort created to crack down on fraud and ethics violations in defense and homeland security procurement.

On the group's goals: The first is to prevent fraud wherever possible. Through early detection, it might be possible to correct or spot problems that could be addressed short of criminal prosecution, or even a civil recovery if the losses are not too extensive. If we could prevent the fraud, that would be best. Second, the working group is there to try to build collaboration between law en-forcement and agencies so they can be most effective in identifying procurement fraud and investigating it and getting it to a U.S. Attorney's Office early in the process for analysis and development of the case.

On a Pentagon effort to root out other ethics violations: What they are doing now is looking at senior officials, particularly those responsible for procurement decisions, and which decisions and which matters they worked on and which companies benefited from that, and what time they occurred. They are trying to look at that in a broad auditing type of way. It might continue indefinitely, just because of the ongoing nature of people leaving government, if it turns out be fruitful. If it turns out that it's impractical because of the complexity of looking at contracting authority and the impact on particular companies and employment, then they might decide to discontinue it. It's the kind of practice that I want the working group to hear about and for other agencies to consider doing if it makes sense for their purposes.

On current ethics rules: We've come a long way in the ethics advice area over the last two decades, and employees know a lot more these days about where to find advice and employees giving advice know a lot more about what to say. There haven't been many cases like Darleen Druyun's, and in terms of prosecution, [the conflict of interest] statute does not get used frequently. That is some indication from an ethics perspective that the vast majority of government officials are aware of and are successful in complying with ethics rules.

On enforcement efforts: More re-sources are needed across-the-board on the resource and procurement fraud side. My experience with inspectors general is they are trying to do a lot with a limited number of agents and they have great energy and vision, but they have to make decisions about priorities in order to utilize limited resources. The law enforcement agencies associated with this work are strapped for resources and would benefit by having additional agents.

Monumental Effort

This year's winner in the "Washington Monument Syndrome" sweepstakes is the National Weather Service. (For those unfamiliar with the syndrome, its symptoms involve issuing dire warnings-such as, "We'll have to close the Washington Monument"-to ward off cuts or less-than-desired increases in an agency's budget.)

Just as Congress prepared to take up the Weather Service's fiscal 2006 budget earlier this year, an employee organization conveniently leaked an internal memo to The Washington Post saying that due to last year's cuts at the organization, "warning lead times will shorten and tornado detection rates will decrease (as will most other NWS performance standards), leading to the troubling and tragic conclusion that there will be unwarranted loss of life."

Weather service officials told the paper that they had a "solid plan" to make sure people get plenty of warning of severe weather ahead, regardless of the agency's budget situation.