Tag: Office of Management and Budget

Trump eyes unusual move on government accountability before Biden takes office

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The White House is considering changes to the budgeting process that require agencies to spell out their policy goals and show progress in achieving them, an unusual move given the imminent change in administration.

According to emails obtained by The Hill, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) plans to craft a memo in the coming weeks that would overhaul how agencies undertake strategic planning and make progress toward accomplishing their objectives in order to receive funding from Congress.

A source familiar with the discussions described it as an unorthodox step on the part of the Trump administration given that the existing mechanisms “are in place to really make government, ideally, more efficient.” Continue reading.

Newly released e-mails show how much Trump’s OMB ‘lied’ to Congress in the Ukraine scandal: report

AlterNet logoDespite the mountain of evidence that House Democrats presented during their impeachment inquiry last year, Republicans in the U.S. Senate (except for Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah) were determined to acquit President Donald Trump on both of the charges that he faced. Nonetheless, new evidence in the Ukraine scandal continues to come in, including unredacted e-mails that have been obtained by Just Security and show that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) knew more than previously thought about the hold that Trump placed on military aid to Ukraine.

According to Just Security’s Kate Brannen, the e-mails “confirm that OMB, including the general counsel’s office, was fully in the loop about the Pentagon’s concerns and took active steps to bury them. They also expose the extent to which OMB misled and even lied to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a congressional investigative body, as the GAO tried to understand the circumstances surrounding the funding hold.”

The e-mails, Brannen notes, “provide new evidence about how and why the Trump Administration withheld military assistance to Ukraine, the Senate never subpoenaed them or any other documents or witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial. If it had, senators, as well as the public, could read these e-mails in unredacted form for themselves.” Continue reading.

White House budget official says decision to delay aid to Ukraine was highly irregular

Washington Post logoA longtime budget official testified Saturday that the White House decision to freeze military aid to Ukraine in mid-July was highly irregular and that senior political appointees in the Office of Management and Budget were unable to provide an explanation for the delay.

The testimony from Mark Sandy, the first employee of OMB to testify in the House impeachment probe, appeared to confirm Democrats’ assertion that the decision to withhold nearly $400 million in congressionally approved funds for Ukraine, including millions in lethal aid, was a political one.

Sandy, the deputy associate director for national security programs at OMB, testified that he was instructed to sign the first of several apportionment letters in which budget officials formally instituted the freeze on funds, according to two people familiar with his testimony who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly. He was never given a specific reason as to why the letter was being sent out, the people added.

View the complete November 16 article by Karoun Demirjian, Rachel Bade, Colby Itkowitz and Erica Werner on The Washington Post website here.