The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton

With only a couple of weeks worth of working days left before the end of the fiscal year, Congress is back in town this week. The big question is if the House and Senate can agree on a continuing resolution come September 30th … and avoid a lapse in appropriations. W-T-O-P capitol hill correspondent Mitchell Miller joins me with the possible scenarios.

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Information at U-S-A Spending dot gov … it's simply incomplete. Dozens of agencies don't report. Another gap is information on dollars awarded to subcontractors. A bill in the House, from New York Republican Nick Langworthy, would improve that particular point, in the view of my next guest. Project on Government Oversight policy associate Janice Luong joins me now.

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Nearly 35 years after passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the resulting features seem unremarkable. Ramps, lifts, talking crosswalk signals. But the A-D-A is dynamic, and now some new rules are coming from the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board. And they apply to federal building accessibility. Joining me from the General Services Administration, Deputy Administrator Katy Kale … and the chief architect of the Public Building Service, Charles Hardy.

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Today on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin

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The Veterans Affairs Department is falling short of one hiring goal, people to help veterans dealing with substance abuse. Now it launched a multi hiring initiative to bring on behavioral health employees to treat substance abuse disorders, but auditors find the VA as far from it goal and spent less than half the money it got from Congress for this particular effort. Federal News Network's Jory Heckman has the latest.

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The Social Security Administration is about to take a big bite out of the time and effort it takes to open the mail and deal with paper documents. As part of its continued effort to improve citizen and employee experience SSA is now accepting electronic signatures for 90% of most commonly used forms, Federal News Network's executive editor Jason Miller got an exclusive update from SSA's chief transformation officer Betsy Bowman.

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Retirement from a career should mean an exciting new phase in life...not a glidepath to the graveyard. Federal retirees tend to be a feisty group. One reason is they tend to prepare carefully. Retirement expert Tammy Flanagan has some observations, and joins me now.

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Very low earth orbit satellites … known as V-L-E-Os … have become important in a variety of surveillance and imaging applications. Trouble is, they're *so* low, they don't stay up very long without propulsion to keep them up. Eventually they run out of fuel. That's a problem the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is trying to solve with a program known as Otter. For details, DARPA program manager Sarah Popkin joins me in studio.

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Today on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin

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