Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This letter formally transmits the briefing in response to a mandate in the conference report (No. 111-298) and senate report (No. 111-31) to the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2010. In accordance with the direction in those reports, and in consultation with congressional staff, we are reporting on (1) actions taken by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Emergency Communications (OEC) to establish the Emergency Communications Preparedness Center (ECPC) and (2) challenges OEC and ECPC officials reported that could affect interagency coordination through ECPC. Based on the results of our review, we are not making any recommendations for congressional consideration or agency action."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This letter highlights the results of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit of the Consolidated Financial Statements of the U.S. Government (CFS) for fiscal years 2009 and 2008. GAO is required by the Government Management Reform Act of 1994 to perform an annual audit of the CFS."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Postal Service's (USPS) financial condition and outlook deteriorated significantly during fiscal year 2009. USPS was not able to cut costs fast enough to offset declining mail volume and revenues resulting from the economic recession and changes in the use of mail, such as electronic bill payment. In July 2009, GAO added USPS's financial condition and outlook to its High-Risk List and reported that USPS urgently needed to restructure to improve its financial viability. Declines in mail volume and revenue, large financial losses, increasing debt, and financial obligations will continue to challenge USPS. This testimony provides (1) information on USPS's financial condition and forecast and (2) GAO's perspective on the need for USPS restructuring. In addition, questions and issues are included for Congress to consider regarding USPS's proposal to reduce delivery from 6 to 5 days. This testimony is based on GAO's past and ongoing work, including its work on postal reform issues, its report adding USPS's financial condition and outlook to its High-Risk List, and updated information on USPS's financial condition and outlook."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony is based on our report entitled "Temporary Assistance for Needy Families: Fewer Eligible Families Have Received Cash Assistance Since the 1990s, and the Recession's Impact on Caseloads Varies by State." As a result of sweeping changes made to federal welfare policy in 1996 with the creation of TANF, welfare changed from a program entitling eligible families to monthly cash payments under Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) to a capped block grant that emphasized employment and work supports for most adult participants who receive such assistance. With the creation of TANF, the number of families who received cash assistance fell significantly, from 4.8 million families on average each month in 1995--just prior to the creation of TANF--to 1.7 million in 2008. During this time frame, poverty among all children initially fell, from about 21 percent in 1995 to about 16 percent in 2000, and then rose thereafter to 19 percent in 2008. Most families receiving cash assistance are single mothers with children, and children in such families have historically experienced high rates of poverty. Furthermore, the recession, which began in late 2007 and deepened nationally …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) specifies several roles for GAO, including conducting bimonthly reviews of selected states' and localities' use of funds made available under the act. This testimony is based on GAO's bimonthly work in California, where the Recovery Act provided more than $85 billion--or about 10 percent of the funds available nationally--for program funding and tax relief. This testimony provides a general overview of: (1) California's use of Recovery Act funds for selected programs, (2) the approaches taken by California agencies to ensure accountability for Recovery Act funds, and (3) the impacts of these funds. This testimony focuses on selected programs that GAO has covered in previous work including the use of Recovery Act funds by the state and two localities' --City of Los Angeles and County of Sacramento, Highway Infrastructure Investment, and the Weatherization Assistance Program. GAO also updated information on three education programs with significant Recovery Act funds being disbursed--the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF), and Recovery Act funds for Title I, Part A, of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), as amended, and Part B …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This report presents the results of our review of the expenses paid from the Department of Justice (DOJ) permanent, indefinite appropriation covering the 7- month period ending September 30, 2009. The expenses we reviewed were those paid out of the permanent, indefinite appropriation by DOJ between March 1, 2009, and September 30, 2009, to cover Independent and Special Counsel administrative activities. With the October 2009 repeal of the requirement for a GAO review and report on such expenses, this represents our final report."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "On November 16, 2009, we issued our opinion on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) fiscal years 2009 and 2008 financial statements. We also issued our opinion on the effectiveness of SEC's internal controls over financial reporting as of September 30, 2009, and our evaluation of SEC's compliance with selected provisions of laws and regulations during fiscal year 2009. The purpose of this report is to present (1) our recommendations related to the significant deficiencies we reported and discussed in our opinion report; (2) less significant internal control issues we identified during our fiscal year 2009 audit of SEC's internal controls and accounting procedures, along with our related recommended corrective actions; (3) the status of the recommendations reported as open in our April 2, 2009, management report (see enclosure I), and (4) the status of the security weaknesses in information systems controls at SEC that we identified in public and "Limited Official Use Only" reports issued in 2005, 2007, 2008, and 2009, that were unresolved at the time of our March 16, 2009, information security reports."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Under the Defense Environmental Restoration Program (DERP), the Department of Defense (DOD) is responsible for cleaning up about 5,400 sites on military bases that have been closed under the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process, as well as 21,500 sites on active bases and over 4,700 formerly used defense sites (FUDS), properties that DOD owned or controlled and transferred to other parties prior to October 1986. The cleanup of contaminants, such as hazardous chemicals or unexploded ordnance, at BRAC bases has been an impediment to the timely transfer of these properties to parties who can put them to new uses. The goals of DERP include (1) reducing risk to human health and the environment (2) preparing BRAC properties to be environmentally suitable for transfer (3) having final remedies in place and completing response actions and (4) fulfilling other established milestones to demonstrate progress toward meeting program performance goals. This testimony is based on prior work and discusses information on (1) how DOD allocates cleanup funding at all sites with defense waste and (2) BRAC cleanup status. It also summarizes other key issues that GAO has identified in the …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The F-35 Lightning II, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), is the Department of Defense's (DOD) most costly and ambitious aircraft acquisition, seeking to simultaneously develop and field three aircraft variants for the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and eight international partners. The JSF is critical for recapitalizing tactical air forces and will require a long-term commitment to very large annual funding outlays. The current estimated investment is $323 billion to develop and procure 2,457 aircraft. This statement draws substantively from GAO's March 19, 2010 report (GAO-10-382). That report discusses JSF costs and schedules, warfighter requirements, manufacturing performance, procurement rates, and development testing plans. This statement also provides an updated analysis of relative costs and benefits from a second (or alternate) engine program. In previous years, we recommended, among other things, that DOD rethink plans to cut test resources, improve reliability of cost estimates, and reduce the number of aircraft procured before testing demonstrates their performance capabilities. In our March 2010 report, we recommended that DOD (1) make a new, comprehensive assessment of the program's costs and schedule and (2) reassess warfighter requirements. DOD concurred with …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) has numerous intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems--including manned and unmanned airborne, space-borne, maritime, and terrestrial systems--that play critical roles in support of current military operations. The demand for these capabilities has increased dramatically. Today's testimony addresses (1) the challenges the military services and defense agencies face processing, exploiting, and disseminating the information collected by ISR systems and (2) the extent to which the military services and defense agencies have developed the capabilities required to share ISR information. This testimony is based on GAO's January 2010 report on DOD's ISR data processing capabilities. GAO reviewed and analyzed documentation, guidance, and strategies of the military services and defense agencies in regard to processing, exploiting, and disseminating ISR data as well as information-sharing capabilities. GAO also visited numerous commands, military units, and locations in Iraq and the United States."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act)--initially estimated to cost $787 billion in spending and tax provisions--aims to promote economic recovery, make investments, and minimize or avoid reductions in state and local government services. The Recovery Act provided the Department of Energy (DOE) more than $43.2 billion, including $36.7 billion for projects and activities and $6.5 billion in borrowing authority, in areas such as energy efficiency and renewable energy, nuclear waste clean-up, and electric grid modernization. This testimony discusses (1) the extent to which DOE has obligated and spent its Recovery Act funds, and (2) the factors that have affected DOE's ability to select and start Recovery Act projects. In addition, GAO includes information on ongoing work related to DOE Recovery Act programs. This testimony is based on prior work and updated with data from DOE."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Recent events including last month's attack on Internal Revenue Service offices in Texas, and the January 2010 shooting in the lobby of the Nevada, federal courthouse demonstrate the continued vulnerability of federal facilities and the safety of the federal employees who occupy them. These events also highlight the continued challenges involved in protecting federal real property and reiterate the importance of protecting the over 1 million government employees, as well as members of the public, who work in and visit the nearly 9,000 federal facilities. This testimony is based on past GAO reports and testimonies and discusses challenges Federal Protective Service (FPS) faces in protecting federal facilities and tenant agencies' perspective of FPS's services. To perform this work, GAO visited a number of federal facilities, surveyed tenant agencies, analyzed documents, and interviewed officials from several federal agencies."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Counties containing federal lands have historically received a percentage of the receipts generated by the sale or use of natural resources on the federal lands. A steep decline in federal timber sales during the 1990s, however, resulted in a significant decrease in federal payments to counties that previously depended on timber receipts. The Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000, reauthorized in 2008, was enacted, in part, to address this decline by stabilizing payments to counties that depended on revenues from timber sales on Forest Service and certain Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands. Under the aceach county may continue to receive a portion of the revenues generated from the sale or use of resources from these lands or may choose instead to receive annual payments based in part on historical revenue payments to the county. Among other things, the act provides for the Forest Service and BLM to implement certain land management projects, known as Title II projects, using a portion of these funds. The act mandates that a certain percentage of Title II projects involving the sale of merchantable timber be carried out under …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Substance use disorders (SUD), such as alcohol abuse and drug addiction, are serious health conditions that affect many Americans, including a substantial number of veterans. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), about 420,000 of the over 5 million veterans receiving health care from VA had SUD diagnoses in fiscal year 2009. Both older veterans and veterans of the current military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are at risk for SUDs, as veterans may use drugs or alcohol to help cope with the effects of stressful events experienced during deployment or with difficulties they encounter in readjusting from wartime military service to civilian life. The identification and treatment of veterans with SUDs is important, as SUDs can have harmful effects on veterans' physical, psychological, and social well-being if left untreated. VA provides SUD services in a range of settings, including inpatient SUD programs that provide acute in-hospital care, which may include detoxification services; residential rehabilitation treatment programs, which provide intensive treatment and rehabilitation services with supported housing; intensive outpatient programs, which provide at least 3 hours of treatment services 3 days per week; and standard outpatient programs, …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This letter formally transmits the briefing in response to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 (Pub. L. No. 111-84), which requires GAO to review Department of Defense (DOD) policies related to year-end spending and the rate of obligations incurred by DOD in the fourth quarter of fiscal years 2006 through 2009, as compared with the obligations incurred in the first three quarters of those fiscal years for both 1-year and multi-year appropriations. GAO is required to report to the Committees on Armed Services of the Senate and House of Representatives by March 31, 2010."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This letter formally transmits the results of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit of the Consolidated Financial Statements of the U.S. Government (CFS) for fiscal years 2009 and 2008. GAO is required by the Government Management Reform Act of 1994 to perform an annual audit of the CFS."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) establishes that federal agencies must provide the public with access to government information, enabling them to learn about government operations and decisions. To help ensure proper implementation, the act requires that agencies annually report specific information about their FOIA operations, such as numbers of requests received and processed and other statistics. In work reported from 2001 to 2008, GAO examined the annual reports for major agencies, describing the status of reported implementation and any observable trends. GAO also reported on agency improvement plans developed in response to a 2005 Executive Order aimed at improving FOIA implementation, including reducing backlogs of overdue requests. GAO was asked to testify on its previous work on FOIA implementation, as well as on selected changes in the FOIA landscape resulting from legislation, policy, and guidance. To develop this testimony, GAO drew on its previous work, as well as publicly available information."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "For years, in addition to experiencing challenges in making disability claims decisions more quickly and reducing its claims backlog, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has faced challenges in improving the accuracy and consistency of its decisions. GAO was asked to discuss issues surrounding VA's Systematic Technical Accuracy Review (STAR) program, a disability compensation and pension quality assurance program, and possible ways, if any, this program could be improved. This statement focuses on actions VA has taken; including those in response to past GAO recommendations, to (1) address identified weaknesses with STAR and (2) improve efforts to monitor the consistency of claims decisions. This statement is based on GAO's prior work, which examined several aspects of STAR, as well as VA's consistency review activities, and on updated information GAO obtained from VA on quality assurance issues that GAO and VA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) have identified. GAO also reviewed VA's OIG March 2009 report on STAR. GAO is not making any new recommendations."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since 2003, the Future Combat System (FCS) program has been the centerpiece of the Army's efforts to transition to a lighter, more agile, and more capable combat force. In 2009, however, concerns over the program's performance led to the Secretary of Defense's decision to significantly restructure and ultimately cancel the acquisition program. As a result, the Army is outlining a new approach to ground force modernization. This statement outlines the Army's preliminary post-FCS actions and identifies the challenges DOD and the Army must address as they proceed. This testimony is based on GAO's report on the Army's Ground Force Modernization effort scheduled for release March 15, 2010. It emphasizes the December 2009 decision to begin low-rate initial production for Increment 1 of the Brigade Combat Team Modernization."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Key scientific assessments have underscored the urgency of reducing emissions of carbon dioxide to help mitigate potentially negative effects of climate change; however, many countries with significant greenhouse gas emissions, including the United States, China, and India, have not committed to binding limits on emissions to date, and carbon dioxide levels continue to rise. Recently, some policymakers have raised questions about geoengineering--large-scale deliberate interventions in the earth's climate system to diminish climate change or its potential impacts--and its role in a broader strategy of mitigating and adapting to climate change. Most geoengineering proposals fall into two approaches: solar radiation management (SRM), which offset temperature increases by reflecting a small percentage of the sun's light back into space, and carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which address the root cause of climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Today's testimony focuses on GAO's preliminary observations on (1) the state of the science regarding geoengineering approaches and their effects, (2) federal involvement in geoengineering activities, and (3) the views of experts and federal officials about the extent to which federal laws and international agreements apply to geoengineering. To address these …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Global hunger continues to worsen despite world leaders' 1996 pledge--reaffirmed in 2000 and 2009--to halve hunger by 2015. To reverse this trend, in 2009 major donor countries pledged about $22.7 billion in a 3-year commitment to agriculture and food security in developing countries, of which $3.5 billion is the U.S. share. This testimony addresses (1) the types and funding of food security programs and activities of relevant U.S. government agencies and (2) progress in developing an integrated U.S. governmentwide strategy to address global food insecurity and the strategy's potential vulnerabilities. This is based on a new GAO report being released at today's hearing (GAO-10-352)."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses highlights of GAO's report about the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) efforts to institutionalize the protection of children's health. EPA's mission is to protect human health and the environment. As a result of mounting evidence about the special vulnerabilities of the developing fetus and child, the federal government and EPA took several bold steps to make children's environmental health a priority in the late 1990s. In 1996, EPA issued the National Agenda to Protect Children's Health from Environmental Threats (National Agenda) and expanded the agency's activities to specifically address risks for children, documenting EPA's plans to achieve seven goals, such as (1) ensuring that all standards set by EPA are protective of any heightened risks faced by children; (2) developing new, comprehensive policies to address cumulative and simultaneous exposures faced by children; and (3) expanding community right-to-know to allow families to make informed choices concerning environmental exposures to their children. EPA's Advisory Committee has raised concerns about whether the agency has continued to maintain its earlier focus on protecting children or capitalized on opportunities to tackle some significant and emerging environmental health challenges. For example, the …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the U.S. Government Accountability Office's (GAO) budget request for fiscal year 2011. This has put us in a better position to assist the Congress in confronting the many difficult challenges facing the nation. In fiscal year 2009, GAO supported Congressional decision making and oversight on a range of critical issues, including the government's efforts to help stabilize financial markets and address the most severe recession since World War II. In addition to providing oversight for the 2008 Economic Stabilization Act and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act), we continued to provide the Congress updates on programs that are at high risk for waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement or are in need of broad reform, and delivered advice and analyses on a broad array of pressing domestic and international issues that demand urgent attention and continuing oversight. These include modernizing the regulatory structure for financial institutions and markets to meet 21st century demands; controlling escalating health care costs and providing more effective oversight of medical products; restructuring of the U.S. Postal Service to ensure its financial stability; and improving the Department of …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "For the last several years, the Department of Defense (DOD) has planned to invest billions of dollars in development and procurement of unmanned aircraft systems. In its fiscal year 2011 budget request the department indicated a significant increase in these investments, expecting to need more than $24 billion from 2010 through 2015. DOD recognizes that to leverage its resources more effectively, it must achieve greater commonality among the military services' unmanned aircraft system acquisition programs. This testimony is based primarily on GAO's July 2009 report (GAO-09-520) which examined 10 unmanned aircraft acquisition programs: eight unmanned aircraft systems--Global Hawk, Reaper, Shadow, Predator, Sky Warrior, Fire Scout, Broad Area Maritime Surveillance, and Unmanned Combat Aircraft System-Demonstration; and two payload development programs--Multi-Platform Radar Technology Insertion Program, and Airborne Signals Intelligence Payload. The testimony focuses on: 1) the cost, schedule, and performance progress of the 10 programs as of July 2009; 2) the extent to which the military services collaborated and identified commonality among the programs; 3) factors influencing the effectiveness of the collaboration; and, 4) recent DOD investment decisions related to these acquisitions."