Technology

Brian Trompeter President Trump’s proposed budget would undermine key environmental programs and cost Northern Virginia tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity, U.S. Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-11th) said June 8. “It’s probably one of the most radical documents that any president has submitted to any Congress,” Connolly told Tysons Regional Chamber of Commerce members during a legislative update at the Tower Club in Tysons. “It slashes domestic investment profoundly an... Read more

Caren Cordell For all of the bipartisan goodwill that modernizing the government’s information technology has beget, there’s one thing that Gerry Connolly thinks can bring it to a halt: the executive branch. Speaking at the MeriTalk’s Cloud for Next-Gen Government conference on June 7, Rep. Connolly, D-Va., said that despite the legislative momentum behind the Modernizing Government Technology Act and White House support through recent executive orders, the movement to upgrade federal IT could s... Read more

Jessie Bur Congress will be busy with future tech initiatives and members have high hopes for the potential of current programs, according to two congressmen who spoke June 7 at MeriTalk’s Cloud Computing Brainstorm. Congressional IT leaders Reps. Will Hurd, R-Texas, and Gerry Connolly, D-Va., talked about the future of major IT initiatives such as FedRAMP, the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act, FITARA, and executive leadership, offering insight into the shape of IT developments in the... Read more

Eliza Collins Republicans are about to give one of the top committee posts in the House to a guy who has never said he wants the job: South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy. Gowdy is expected to be chosen this week to take over the chairmanship of the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, despite the fact he has not said he is running for the position. The Republican Steering Committee — which is made up of Republican leadership and other representatives — will meet this week to choo... Read more

Bill McAllister Forty-eight years after President Richard M. Nixon pleaded with postal unions to support his plan for an independent postal service, another Republican president appears to be saying those unions might have achieved too many benefits with their collective-bargaining rights. That seems to be what Donald Trump’s proposed federal budget for fiscal 2018 is saying. The president wants to roll back some of the gains the postal unions have made in the almost five decades since Nixon gav... Read more

Damian Paletta and Mike DeBonis President Trump faces an increasingly narrow path to win major legislative victories before the looming August recess, with only two months left to revive his health-care or tax initiatives before Congress departs for a long break. White House officials said Tuesday that Trump has become increasingly incensed that legislation is bogging down in the Senate, something they blame on Democrats. Trump wrote on Twitter that the Senate should change its long-standing rul... Read more

Joe Davidson President Trump, with his well-crafted disrupter reputation, potentially could disrupt one self-funding service Americans directly use almost every day — mail delivery. In the fiscal 2018 budget plan the Trump administration released this week, he reopened the divisive issue of cutting Saturday mail service. After a long and contentious effort, Republicans and Democrats, postal officials, postal unions and mass mailers managed to reach a compromise on postal reform with Saturday ser... Read more

Robert McCartney President Trump’s full budget plan, issued Tuesday, is even worse for the Washington region than the initial “skinny” version released in March, local government officials and analysts say. The new one includes all the same ominous proposals that prompted warnings that the spending plan would worsen economic inequality and possibly tip the area into recession. The White House still wants to shrink the local federal workforce by thousands of jobs and slash spending for affordable... Read more

Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA) released the following statement on President Trump's FY2018 Budget proposal: “The President's FY2018 budget proposal is the most radical policy document to come out of Washington since the failed Ryan Budget. It is a blueprint for social Darwinism and a unilateral retreat from our commitments at home and abroad. How does slashing Medicaid, Medicare, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Social Security, disability insurance, NIH funding, SNAP, community deve... Read more

Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA), a coauthor the Modernizing Government Technology Act of 2017, released the following statement after the House passed the MGT Act today. “I am pleased the MGT Act has once again passed the House and is now one step closer to becoming law,” said Congressman Connolly. “The current patchwork of outdated, legacy IT systems is simply unsustainable in the current cyber climate. By leveraging the savings created by FITARA, our legislation will help transition federal ... Read more