The Office of Congressional Workplace Rights enforces fair employment and occupational safety and health rules for over 30,000 employees in the legislative branch. Due to heightened awareness of workplace sexual harassment, Congress passed a 2018 law requiring the office to revise the process for resolving discrimination and harassment claims. Other requirements included creating an online optio...

The five studies GAO reviewed that used microsimulation models to estimate the effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) on employer-sponsored coverage generally predicted little change in prevalence in the near term, while results of employer surveys varied more widely. The five microsimulation study estimates ranged from a net decrease of 2.5 percent to a net increase of...

Annual pay adjustments for the General Schedule (GS), the pay system covering the majority of federal workers, are either determined through the process specified in the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990 (FEPCA) or set based on percent increases authorized directly by Congress. GS employees receive an across-the-board increase (ranging from 0 to 3.8 percent since FEPCA was implemente...

This speech was given by the Comptroller General before the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia May 20, 2012. GAO’s strategic plan for serving the Congress and the country highlights key trends affecting the United States and its place in the world. These include:evolving security threats;urgent fiscal sustainability and debt...

Partnership programs allow individuals who purchase Partnership long-term care insurance policies to exempt at least some of their personal assets from Medicaid eligibility requirements. In response to a congressional request, GAO examined (1) the benefits and premium requirements of Partnership policies as compared with those of traditional long-term care insurance policies; (2) the demographics...

As requested, GAO provided for audits of the financial statements of the U.S. Senate Restaurants Revolving Fund (the Fund) for the fiscal years ended September 30, 2006, and 2005, by contracting with the independent public accounting firm of Clifton Gunderson LLP.In its audit of the Fund, Clifton Gunderson, LLP reported that the financial statements were presented fairly, in all material aspects,...

This testimony discusses the nation's long-term fiscal outlook and the challenge it poses for the budget and oversight processes. First, GAO provides results of its most recent simulations of the long-term fiscal outlook, updating a model GAO initially developed in 1992. GAO also discusses some ideas for increasing transparency of the long-term costs of government commitments and the range of fisc...

The transformation of the Government Printing Office (GPO) is under way. This report captures the results of our efforts over the past year to assess and help strengthen GPO's transformation and strategic planning efforts. It is the final part of GAO's response to both a mandate requiring GAO to examine the current state of printing and dissemination of public government information and a congress...

The Consolidated Appropriations Resolution of 2003 Conference Report mandated that GAO review the Office of Compliance (OOC), an independent legislative branch agency created by the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 (CAA). OOC, a 15-person office with about $2 million in expenditures during fiscal year 2003, administers and enforces various CAA provisions related to fair employment and occu...

On October 15, 1990, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was enacted providing for payments to individuals who contracted certain cancers and other serious diseases presumably as a result of their exposure to radiation released during aboveground nuclear weapons tests or as a result of their employment associated with the uranium mining industry during the Cold War era. The RECA Amendme...