Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 2004, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) began work on its Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) initiative to improve the safety of commercial motor vehicles, such as trucks and buses. FMCSA, whose primary mission is to reduce commercial motor vehicle-related crashes, fatalities and injuries, has made progress on CSA but needs to complete both implementation throughout all states and a Carrier Safety Fitness Determination rulemaking before CSA is fully implemented. CSA represents a different, more data-driven approach to motor carrier safety. Under CSA, which introduces a new system for identifying and responding to carrier safety risks, FMCSA intends to increase the number of carriers it evaluates and reduce crashes involving commercial vehicles. In light of delays in implementing CSA, Congress is concerned about FMCSA's ability to implement the program and directed GAO to monitor the program's implementation and review FMCSA's capacity to meet milestones within its planned cost estimates. As part of this work, Congress asked us to provide detailed information on the resources FMCSA has devoted and plans to devote to implementing CSA. This report provides information on (1) the amount of actual and proposed funding …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins ""

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Our work over the past several years has highlighted long-standing, widespread, and significant problems with improper payments in the federal government. Fiscal year 2010 marked the seventh year of implementation of the Improper Payments Information Act of 2002 (IPIA), which requires executive branch agencies to annually review all programs and activities to identify those that are susceptible to significant improper payments, estimate the annual amount of improper payment for such programs and activities, report these estimates, and report on actions taken to reduce any improper payment estimates that exceed $10 million. On July 22, 2010, the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010 (IPERA) was enacted. IPERA amended IPIA by expanding on the previous requirements for identifying, estimating, and reporting on programs and activities susceptible to significant improper payments and to expand requirements for recovering overpayments across a broad range of federal programs. IPERA provisions related to identifying, estimating, and reporting on improper payments generally become effective in fiscal year 2011. For fiscal year 2010, federal agencies reported an estimated $125.4 billion in improper payments, an increase of about $16 billion over the fiscal year 2009 estimate …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Although a postsecondary education is vitally important to many individuals and the nation's ability to compete globally, high college tuition rates are prompting concerns that it may remain an elusive goal for some. To help students finance their education, Congress recently raised the ceiling on the amount individual students can borrow under the federal Stafford Loan program (referred to in legislation as "loan limits"). Congress initially did so for first- and second-year undergraduate students as well as for graduate and professional students in academic year (AY) 2007-08, and subsequently for all qualified undergraduate students receiving unsubsidized Stafford loans in AY 2008-09. The Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act of 2008 directed GAO to assess the impact of these increases in the loan limits on tuition and other expenses and borrowing. Since information was available only on the first loan limit increase, we focused on the AY 2007-08 loan limit increase, framing our study with three key questions: (1) What are the patterns in prices and undergraduate enrollment at institutions of higher education since the AY 2007-08 loan limit increases took effect? (2) To what extent did undergraduate …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "To help expand health insurance coverage among the 50 million uninsured Americans, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as amended (PPACA) mandates that individuals, subject to certain exceptions, obtain health insurance coverage or pay a financial penalty beginning in 2014--the "individual mandate". At the same time, PPACA generally requires insurers to accept all applicants, regardless of health status, and prohibits insurers from excluding coverage based on any preexisting conditions. An individual mandate such as PPACA requires has been the subject of continued debate. Many health care policy experts have stressed the importance of a mandate in expanding health care coverage and keeping premiums affordable. For example, experts have noted that such a federal requirement may be necessary to prompt many individuals, such as younger, healthier individuals, to obtain coverage they otherwise would forego--particularly once they are guaranteed access to that coverage later when they may need it. They suggest that bringing these younger, healthier individuals into the insurance market is necessary to avoid adverse selection, whereby disproportionately less healthy individuals who need health care services enroll in coverage, leading to higher premiums that further discourage healthy individuals …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Identity theft is a serious and growing problem in the United States. Taxpayers are harmed when identity thieves file fraudulent tax documents using stolen names and Social Security numbers. In 2010 alone, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) identified over 245,000 identity theft incidents that affected the tax system. The hundreds of thousands of taxpayers with tax problems caused by identity theft represent a small percentage of the expected 140 million individual returns filed, but for those affected, the problems can be quite serious. GAO was asked to describe, among other things, (1) when IRS detects identity theft based refund and employment fraud, (2) the steps IRS has taken to resolve, detect, and prevent innocent taxpayers' identity theft related problems, and (3) constraints that hinder IRS's ability to address these issues. GAO's testimony is based on its previous work on identity theft. GAO updated its analysis by examining data on identity theft cases and interviewing IRS officials. GAO makes no new recommendations but reports on IRS's efforts to address GAO's earlier recommendation that IRS develop performance measures and collect data suitable for assessing the effectiveness of its identity theft …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In June 2009, following the expenditure of close to $3 billion and a critical Nunn-McCurdy breach of the cost growth threshold, the Department of Defense (DOD) terminated the Navy's VH-71 presidential helicopter acquisition program and contract because of cost growth, schedule delays, and projected system performance. The Presidential Helicopter VXX program is a successor Navy program to the terminated VH-71 program acquisition and has been initiated to develop aircraft to replace the current, aging presidential helicopter fleet. The Ike Skelton National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011 (the Act) directed GAO to review and report annually to the congressional defense committees on the VXX program through 2013. This is the first of the required GAO reports. It discusses (1) major lessons learned from the terminated VH-71 program that should be applied to the follow-on VXX program and (2) the current acquisition approach of the VXX program and sufficiency of the underlying acquisition plans and related documentation."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 2010, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) processed about 137 million individual income tax returns and issued 107 million refunds totaling over $312 billion. The compliance checks it performs before refunds are issued thus could affect millions of taxpayers and billions of dollars of refunds by identifying taxpayers who overclaim or underclaim tax benefits to which they are entitled. Math error authority (MEA) is just one example of the prerefund compliance checks that IRS uses. During 2010, IRS sent taxpayers 8.4 million notices for almost 10.6 million math errors identified on their 2009 individual tax returns. GAO's statement today will focus on three key areas: (1) prerefund checks and their benefits, (2) how those checks can be enhanced immediately, and (3) how they may be enhanced in the future. It is mostly based on GAO's previous work issued from 2008 through 2011, including an interim report on IRS's 2011 tax filing season, and our ongoing analysis of the 2011 filing season."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since fiscal year 2001, the federal government has been unable to collect over $1 billion in antidumping (AD) and countervailing (CV) duties imposed to remedy injurious, unfair foreign trade practices. These include AD duties imposed on products exported to the United States at unfairly low prices (i.e., dumped) and CV duties on products exported to the United States that were subsidized by foreign governments. These uncollected duties show that the U.S. government has not fully remedied the unfair trade practices for U.S. industry and has lost out on a substantial amount of duty revenue to the U.S. Treasury. This statement summarizes key findings from prior GAO reports on (1) past initiatives to improve AD/CV duty collection and (2) additional options for improving AD/CV duty collection."

A statement of record issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) obligated about $367 billion in fiscal year 2010 to acquire goods and services to meet its mission and support its operations, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan. GAO's work, as well as that of others, has documented shortcomings in DOD's strategic and acquisition planning, contract administration and oversight, and acquisition workforce. These are challenges that need to be addressed by DOD and by the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as they carry out their missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and prepare for future contingencies. Today's statement discusses (1) contract management challenges faced by DOD, including those that take on heightened significance in a contingency environment; (2) actions DOD has taken and those needed to address these challenges; and (3) similar challenges State and USAID face. The statement is drawn from GAO's body of work on DOD contingency contracting, contract management, and workforce, as well as prior reports on State and USAID's contracting and workforce issues."

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Constitutionality of Texas Transportation Code section 251.053, concerning a commissioners court’s declaration of a public road (RQ-0900-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Authority of Regional Transportation Council over transit related projects located in Richland Hills (RQ-0901-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Valuation of a residential dwelling offered as a prize at a charitable raffle (RQ-0905-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a local board of realtors is a “nonprofit community business organization” for purposes of section 11.231 of the Tax Code (RQ-0970-GA)

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the potential for duplication and fragmentation in economic development programs. In March 2011 and more recently in May 2011 we reported on potential duplication among federal economic development programs. We are involved in ongoing work focusing on economic development programs because if they are administered efficiently and effectively, they can contribute to the well-being of our nation's economy at the least cost to taxpayers. Absent a common definition for economic development, we had previously developed a list of nine activities most often associated with economic development. These activities include planning and developing strategies for job creation and retention, developing new markets for existing products, building infrastructure by constructing roads and sewer systems to attract industry to undeveloped areas, and establishing business incubators to provide facilities for new businesses' operations. Our recent work includes information on 80 economic development programs at four agencies--the Departments of Commerce (Commerce), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Agriculture (USDA) and the Small Business Administration (SBA). SBA administers 19 of the 80 programs. According to the agencies, funding provided for these 80 programs in fiscal year 2010 amounted to $6.2 billion, …

Transcript of a public hearing held by the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq & Afghanistan held April 25, 2011 in Washington D.C. This hearing includes testimony from five witnesses representing academic and government professional views on reform for contingency contracting.

News release about DART's Green Line light rail project as the 2010 "Deal of the Year" by the Dallas Business Journal.

News release about DART ordering a large number of compressed natural gas buses.

Document containing photographs and event information for a memorial service for TXSSAR Plano chapter member Don W. Rector. Photographs include the Honor Guard during the memorial, and pictures of Rector in uniform and receiving awards.

Minutes for the September 24, 2011 TXSSAR meeting, held by the McKinney chapter.