A bill to expand non-VA health care for veterans advances through Congress
The bill would make it easier for veterans covered by the VA to seek heath care in the private sector.
- A bill expanding veterans’ access to non-VA health care makes its way through Congress. The House VA Committee advanced the Veterans’ ACCESS Act. The bill would make it easier for veterans covered by the VA to seek heath care in the private sector and would create an online patient self-service scheduling system. Committee Chairman Mike Bost (R-Ill.) said the bill would help veterans avoid waiting for medical appointments.
- The Defense Department launched a sweeping review of how it selects and promotes military officers. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the review is intended to ensure the military selects the best leaders to command America’s troops. “We’re reviewing the whole thing, because we’re here to make institutional change that brings war fighters to the top. And this is a historic opportunity under President Trump, who gives us the shield to do these kind of things in the department, so that we preserve it for generations to come,” he said. The review will examine everything from performance evaluations and current promotion board processes to command selection boards and professional military education. Former Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller, who gained national attention for criticizing senior military leadership following the Afghanistan withdrawal, will lead the effort.
- Today is officially the last day for the Defense Department’s troubled household goods moving contract. HomeSafe Alliance’s work under the Global Household Goods contract is ending after the Pentagon decided to cancel the nearly $18 billion contract last month. For the foreseeable future, all military moves will be handled under the legacy moving system the GHC contract was intended to replace. A new joint task force is working on recommendations for a restructured moving system after GHC’s failure. That task force’s report is due on Sept. 5.
- The Agriculture Department is planning to relocate more than half of its D.C. area employees. USDA will move thousands of D.C.-based employees to five hubs across the country, with lower locality pay rates. That’s the latest that’s happening under its agency reorganization plan. The department said it will carry out the relocations in phases. The department will also close regional offices for the Forest Service, the Food and Nutrition Service, and the National Agricultural Statistics Service. About 90% of USDA employees already work outside of the D.C. area. The USDA is also letting over 15,000 employees leave the agency later this year, after they accepted deferred resignation and early retirement offers.
- Bipartisan senators are eyeing workplace improvements for more than 10,000 federal firefighters who work at government and defense facilities. The new Federal Firefighters Families First Act aims to reduce mandatory overtime hours and adjust benefits calculations for the frontline employees. Currently, federal firefighters are required to work 20 hours of overtime each week. The bill would cut the mandatory overtime to less than half of that. The senators said their bill would improve work-life balance and retention of federal firefighters.
- Efforts to streamline FedRAMP are happening faster than expected. It could still be a few years away, but the General Services Administration’s FedRAMP Director Pete Waterman said his team is moving quickly toward its goal of automating the government’s cloud security program. “[There’s an] opportunity to build a real automated security system with multi-party validation, with automation built in,” Waterman said. “That’s where we all want to go. Everyone’s been talking about it forever, but now we can actually get there.” GSA has been planning to overhaul FedRAMP, in an effort to make the program less burdensome to contractors and agencies, and more reliant on automation.
- President Donald Trump’s pick to be chief of naval operations told lawmakers he would propose a plan to streamline Navy command and control if he is confirmed for the position. In written responses to advance policy questions submitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Adm. Daryl Caudle said he would seek to align responsibility and accountability with the operational risk commanders face in day-to-day decisions, rather than continue shifting authority to stakeholders without direct risk. Caudle is interviewing for the top Navy role following Trump’s abrupt firing of Adm. Lisa Franchetti. He also pledged to work with the Navy secretary to adopt private-sector best practices to improve quality of life for sailors and their families.
- As part of a lawsuit, the Trump administration has released a long-awaited list of planned reductions in force across the government. But officials are cautioning that the list isn’t a reliable indicator of what’s actually happening with the administration’s workforce reductions. The administration told the Supreme Court last month that about 40 RIFs were in progress across 17 agencies, but until yesterday, officials refused to turn over the actual list. They now say the list was always simply an estimate, and the Office of Personnel Management doesn’t know how many employees might have been involved in any RIFs that did occur.
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