Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the use of the homestead exemption by bankruptcy debtors in Texas and Florida, focusing on statistically valid probability samples of chapter 7 bankruptcy cases that were closed in 1998 in the Northern District of Texas and the Southern District of Florida. GAO used the data from these samples to estimate for each district the (1) the proportion of chapter 7 personal bankruptcy debtors who claimed a homestead exemption; (2) average and median amount of the homestead exemptions claimed; (3) average and median amount of total scheduled debts for those debtors who claimed a homestead exemption; and (4) estimated average and median amount of debts discharged by debtors who claimed a homestead exemption."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In recent years, violence along the U.S.-Mexico border has escalated dramatically, due largely to the Mexican government's efforts to disrupt Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTO). U.S. officials note the violence associated with Mexican DTOs poses a serious challenge for U.S. law enforcement, threatening citizens on both sides of the border, and U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials generally agree many of the firearms used to perpetrate crimes in Mexico are illicitly trafficked from the United States across the Southwest border. GAO was asked to examine (1) data on the types, sources, and users of these firearms; (2) key challenges confronting U.S. government efforts to combat illicit sales of firearms in the United States and stem the flow of them into Mexico; (3) challenges faced by U.S. agencies collaborating with Mexican authorities to combat the problem of illicit arms; and (4) the U.S. government's strategy for addressing the issue. GAO analyzed program information and firearms data and met with U.S. and Mexican officials on both sides of the border."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Prior GAO reports have identified problems with the Department of Defense's (DOD) management and oversight of contractors supporting deployed forces. GAO issued its first comprehensive report examining these problems in June 2003. Because of the broad congressional interest in U.S. military operations in Iraq and DOD's increasing use of contractors to support U.S. forces in Iraq, GAO initiated this follow-on review under the Comptroller General's statutory authority. Specifically, GAO's objective was to determine the extent to which DOD has improved its management and oversight of contractors supporting deployed forces since our 2003 report. GAO reviewed DOD policies and interviewed military and contractor officials both at deployed locations and in the United States."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In fiscal year 2007, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) obligated about $12 billion for acquisitions to support homeland security missions. DHS's major investments include Coast Guard ships and aircraft; border surveillance and screening equipment; nuclear detection equipment; and systems to track finances and human resources. In part to provide insight into the cost, schedule, and performance of these acquisitions, DHS established an investment review process in 2003. However, concerns have been raised about how well the process has been implemented--particularly for large investments. GAO was asked to (1) evaluate DHS's implementation of the investment review process, and (2) assess DHS's integration of the investment review and budget processes to ensure major investments fulfill mission needs. GAO reviewed relevant documents, including those for 57 DHS major investments (investments with a value of at least $50 million)--48 of which required department-level review through the second quarter of fiscal year 2008; and interviewed DHS headquarters and component officials."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Nearly all of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program managers GAO surveyed reported their programs had experienced significant challenges. Sixty-eight of the 71 respondents reported they experienced funding instability, faced workforce shortfalls, or their planned capabilities changed after initiation, and most survey respondents reported a combination of these challenges. DHS lacks the data needed to accurately measure program performance, but GAO was able to use survey results, information DHS provided to Congress, and an internal DHS review from March 2012 to identify 42 programs that experienced cost growth, schedule slips, or both. GAO gained insight into the magnitude of the cost growth for 16 of the 42 programs, which increased from $19.7 billion in 2008 to $52.2 billion in 2011, an aggregate increase of 166 percent."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Thirty years ago Congress enacted protections to ensure that participants in multiemployer pension plans received their promised benefits. These defined benefit plans are created by collective bargaining agreements covering more than one employer. Today, these plans provide pension coverage to over 10.4 million participants in approximately 1,500 multiemployer plans insured by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). In this report, GAO examines (1) the current status of nation's multiemployer plans; (2) steps PBGC takes to monitor the health of these plans; (3) the structure of multiemployer plans in other countries; and (4) statutory and regulatory changes that could help plans provide participants with the benefits they are due. To address these questions, GAO analyzed government and industry data and interviewed government officials, pension experts and plan practitioners in the United States, the Netherlands, Denmark, United Kingdom, and Canada."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This letter responds to the request by the Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Civil Service and Agency Organization, House Committee on Government Reform that GAO provide answers to follow-up questions from recent hearing entitled "First Year on the Job: Chief Human Capital Officers.""

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "After the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act) in 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, Division of Corporation Finance, and Division of Enforcement (herein "the offices") established a working group that developed an internal supervisory control framework. Internal supervisory controls include the processes established by management to help ensure that procedures applicable to staff are performed completely, consistent with applicable policies and procedures, and remain current. The overall control framework is generally consistent with federal internal control standards, which includes identifying and assessing risks, identifying and assessing internal controls, and reporting the results of testing to management and Congress."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Specialty hospitals represent a small but growing segment of the health care industry. These hospitals specialize in providing care for certain conditions, such as cardiac care, or performing certain procedures, such as orthopedic surgery. Specialty hospitals are not an entirely new phenomenon, as children's and other types of specialty hospitals have existed for decades. Consequently, it is challenging to distinguish between the old and new types of specialty hospitals. One aspect that sets apart the newer genre of specialty hospitals is that many are owned, in part, by the physicians who work in them. Advocates contend that, because of their focused mission, specialty hospitals can provide high-quality specialty services more efficiently than general hospitals. Because specialty hospitals can tailor their facilities and resources to best fit the needs of certain types of patients, individuals treated in such hospitals may enjoy relatively greater convenience and comfort. Specialty hospitals may also offer physicians financial and work environment advantages. Advocates have stated that the focused mission and dedicated resources of specialty hospitals allow physicians to treat more patients than they could in general hospitals. Physicians may gain financially from this increased …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and other federal agencies have taken steps to improve federal spending data available on USAspending.gov. This effort to publicly display comprehensive data arose from the federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, which required OMB to establish a free, publicly accessible website containing data on federal awards and subawards. OMB launched USAspending.gov in December 2007 to meet these requirements. As GAO reported in 2010, while OMB had satisfied most of the requirements associated with the act, such as establishing the site with required data elements and search capability, it had only partially satisfied the requirement to establish a pilot program to test the collection and display of subaward data and had not met the requirements to include subaward data by January 2009, or to report to Congress on the site’s usage. Also, GAO found that from a sample of 100 awards on USAspending.gov, each award had at least one data error and that USAspending.gov did not include information on grants from programs at 9 agencies for fiscal year 2008. Subsequently, OMB and agencies have taken steps to improve the site …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) spent about 40 percent of the total defense budget to operate and maintain the nation's military forces in fiscal year 2005. Operation and maintenance (O&M) funding is considered one of the major components of funding for readiness. O&M appropriations fund the training, supply, and equipment maintenance of military units as well as the infrastructure of military bases. Over the past several years, DOD has increasingly used contractors, rather than uniformed or DOD civilian personnel, to provide O&M services in areas such as logistics, base operations support, information technology services, and administrative support. The House Appropriations Committee directed GAO to examine growing O&M costs and support services contracting. This GAO report (1) identifies the trends in O&M costs and services contracts and the reasons for the trends, (2) discusses whether increased services contracting has exacerbated the growth of O&M costs, and (3) provides perspectives on the benefits and concerns associated with increased contracting for support services. GAO analyzed DOD's O&M appropriations, budgets, and services contract costs over a 10-year period and developed case studies of outsourced O&M-related work at three installations. GAO …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) requires that we annually audit the financial statements of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which is implemented by the Office of Financial Stability (OFS). On November 15, 2010, we issued our audit report including (1) an unqualified opinion on OFS's financial statements for TARP as of and for the fiscal years ended September 30, 2010, and 2009, and (2) an opinion that OFS maintained effective internal control over financial reporting as of September 30, 2010. We also reported that our tests of OFS's compliance with selected provisions of laws and regulations for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2010, disclosed no instances of noncompliance. Our November 2010 audit report concluded that although certain internal controls could be improved, OFS maintained, in all material respects, effective internal control over financial reporting as of September 30, 2010, that provided reasonable assurance that misstatements, losses, or noncompliance material in relation to the financial statements would be prevented or detected and corrected on a timely basis. Our audit report also identified a significant deficiency in OFS's internal control over its accounting and financial …

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the European Union's (EU) and the U.S.' agricultural export subsidy programs, focusing on: (1) EU and U.S. compliance with the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture commitments to reduce agricultural export subsidies; and (2) EU and U.S. plans regarding the future use of agricultural export subsidies."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the District of Columbia's new System of Accounting and Reporting (SOAR), focusing on: (1) the training attendance statistics for SOAR; (2) the reported contract costs and total hours by deliverables for SOAR; (3) which applications of the vendor's financial management package the District of Columbia is implementing; (4) the cost of the implementation of SOAR at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC); (5) which agencies will implement SOAR; and (6) what types of resources are dedicated to transition assistance."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reviewed the audit reports covering the financial statements of the American Council of Learned Societies for fiscal years 2002 and 2001. GAO found no reportable instances of noncompliance. The audit reports included the auditors' opinions that the financial statements of the corporation were presented fairly in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Logistics Modernization Program (LMP) is an Army business system that is intended to replace the aging Army systems that manage inventory and depot repair operations. From 1999 through 2009, the Army expended more than $1 billion for LMP. LMP was originally scheduled to be completed by 2005, but after the first deployment in July 2003, the Army delayed fielding because of significant problems. The Army later decided to field the system in two additional deployments: the second in May 2009 and the third in October 2010. GAO was asked to evaluate the extent to which the Army will achieve the intended functionality (e.g., supply chain management and materiel maintenance) from LMP for the commands, depots, and arsenals participating in the third deployment. To do this, GAO reviewed Army plans and policies related to LMP and met with Army officials at three Army commands and several third deployment sites."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Energy (DOE) pays its contractors billions of dollars each year to implement its major projects--those costing more than $400 million each. Many major projects have experienced substantial cost and schedule overruns, largely because of contract management problems. GAO was asked to assess, for major departmental projects, (1) DOE's use of performance incentives to effectively control costs and maintain schedules, (2) the reliability of the data DOE uses to monitor and assess contractor performance, and (3) the reliability of the Project Assessment and Reporting System (PARS) data that senior managers use for project oversight."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) would likely realize large financial gains from its proposed health care plan, primarily by increasing retirees’ use of Medicare. Specifically, USPS estimates that its plan would reduce its retiree health benefit liability by $54.6 billion, thereby eliminating its unfunded retiree health benefit liability. The plan would also reduce USPS’s required total annual health care payments by an estimated $7.8 billion in the first year of implementation and by $33.2 billion over the first 5 years of implementation. USPS also projects that relative to the total annual health care payments it would expect to make (reflecting its stated inability to make prefunding payments to fund retiree health benefits), its new plan would reduce its payments by $2.1 billion in the first year of implementation and $12.4 billion over 5 years. USPS also projects that its plan would increase the more than $550 billion that the federal government spends annually for Medicare by $1.0 billion in the first year and an average of about $1.3 billion annually in the first 5 years of its health plan—about 0.2 percent of Medicare’s annual costs. GAO …

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "On October 21, 2002, we reported that consular staff at posts around the world held different views on balancing national security and customer service in the process of adjudicating visas. Since then, the Department of State's Bureau of Consular Affairs has underscored the importance of visa operations in protecting our nation's security and implemented many changes in visa processing to tighten security screening for applicants worldwide. Because of Canada's proximity to the United States and the fact that many nationals from countries of concern apply for U.S. visas in Canada, Congress asked us to obtain the views of U.S. consular officers in Canada regarding the visa process. In response, we are providing information from consular staff who adjudicate U.S. visas in Canada regarding their perceptions of the importance of national security in the visa process, including impediments that could interfere with efforts to make security a top priority in visa processing."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 2004, the Navy completed a study of how many selected reserve personnel are needed to support the active force in meeting current and future mission requirements. The Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization Act for 2005 mandated that GAO assess several aspects of the Navy's study. This report addresses (1) the criteria and process the Navy used to conduct the review and what limitations affected the Navy's analyses and implementation plan; and (2) how the recommendations from the review will affect the reserve's personnel, funding, and command and control relationship with the active force."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "We reviewed the audit reports covering the financial statements of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, for fiscal years 1999 through 2002. GAO's review disclosed no reportable instances of noncompliance with the financial reporting requirements of the law. The audit reports included the auditors' opinions that the financial statements of the corporation were presented fairly in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Over the past two decades, provisions of the Food Security Act of 1985, among others, have allowed the Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency in partnership with the Department of the Interior's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) to add farmlands found to have important resources to the National Wildlife Refuge System. The Farm Service Agency transferred such farmlands to the Service through outright ownership ("fee simple") or through conservation easements. Individual farmlands are managed by the nearest refuge office. GAO was asked to examine (1) the extent of farmland received by the Service, (2) the extent to which the Service is currently managing its farmlands, and (3) alternatives for managing these lands. To answer these objectives, GAO visited five refuges and surveyed managers responsible for a random sample of 98 farmlands."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "For more than a decade, college prices have been rising consistently and have continued to rise at a gradual pace after the Stafford loan limit increases were enacted in 2008 and 2009. However, it is difficult to determine if a direct relationship exists between increases in college prices and the Stafford loan limit increases because of the confluence of many other factors that occurred around the time the loan limit increases took effect. Specifically, when the loan limit increases took effect, the nation was in a recession, which created one of the most tumultuous and complex economic environments in recent history. GAO's analysis found that the economic effects of the recession, which affected families' employment, income, and net worth make it difficult to isolate the impact the recession had on students' decisions to borrow money to finance college expenses versus the impact of the loan limit increases. Further, federal, state, and institutional aid available to students also increased significantly around the same time the loan limit increases went into effect. It is difficult to determine the extent to which the increased availability of this financial aid …

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In response to a Congressional request, we issued a report in March 2003 on the Department of Defense's (DOD) strategic planning efforts for civilian personnel at DOD and selected defense components, including the four military services and two defense agencies. In that report we made recommendations to the Secretary of Defense to strengthen civilian human capital planning, including integration with military personnel and sourcing initiatives. DOD's response to our March 2003 report and recommendations were received too late to be included in that report. To provide our perspective on DOD's comments, we briefly summarize our March 2003 report's objectives, results, and recommendations and DOD's comments, along with our evaluation of the comments. DOD's civilian employees play key roles in such areas as defense policy, intelligence, finance, acquisitions, and weapon systems maintenance. Although downsized 38 percent between fiscal years 1989 and 2002, this workforce has taken on greater roles as a result of DOD's restructuring and transformation. Responding to congressional concerns about the quality and quantity of, and the strategic planning for, the civilian workforce, we determined the following for DOD, the military services, and selected defense agencies (the …