The bank serves as the U.S. government’s official export credit agency, where it finances and insures international purchases of U.S. goods to the tune of $100 billion per year.

According to a bank fact sheet, it financed $11 billion in sales of Boeing-made aircraft.

Under a bipartisan compromise, approved 78-20 in the full chamber, the lending limit will go up to $120 billion this year, $130 billion in 2013 and reach $140 billion by the end of fiscal 2014.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the bank in 1934 through an executive order.

According to Federal Times, Tangherlini said in video remarks to an agency expo in San Antonio that agencies must continue finding ways to reduce overhead costs and fund critical operations.

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy recently released a second memo in its “Mythbusters” campaign, detailing how contracting officers frequently disclose pricing information for goods and services to other agencies.

Many vendors believe that information cannot be shared across agencies, OFPP said.

Kendall has served in this capacity in an acting role since Ashton Carter was promoted to the deputy secretary post.

He also has served as principal deputy undersecretary for acquisition and technology for two years.

In the same session, the panel voted to confirm the nominations of James Miller Jr. as defense undersecretary for policy and Erin Conaton as defense undersecretary for personnel and readiness.

Jessica Wright was also confirmed as assistant secretary for reserve affairs, Derek Chollet as assistant secretary for international security affairs, and Heidi Shyu as assistant Army secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology.

All nominees will face a confirmation vote before the full Senate.

If confirmed, Miller would succeed Michele Flournoy, who announced her departure from the Pentagon in December.

Among the House Appropriations defense subcommittee’s proposals, one that directs the Air Force to not retire the Block 30 Global Hawk unmanned intelligence aircraft, made by Northrop Grumman.

Raytheon’s Patriot program would receive $300 million to purchase more PAC-3 missiles and launcher systems.

Lawmakers proposed adding $988 million to the Navy’s budget for one DDG-51 destroyer, made by General Dynamics subsidiary Bath Iron Works, and $506 million to keep three cruisers and perform engineering work on ballistic missile defense capabilities.

Read Marcus Weisgerber’s full account for additional details on which programs could receive more funding and which could see less.

Over the last two years, the federal government cut the waiting time for most clearance applicants by 30 days, Jill Aitoro wrote, quoting a survey from Clearancejobs.com.

Survey authors noted that the majority of defense clearances are processed in Fort Meade, Md., resulting from facility consolidation, and the Office of Personnel Management has increased its investment in the clearance process.

Forty-one percent of government and contractor candidates wait more than six months and 7 percent wait more than a year, the survey said.

Applying for top secret clearances is a much longer process, as candidates wait as much as three times longer to receive clearances.

In December 2011, the Government Accountability Office cited improvements in the Defense Department’s program for processing clearances, six years after GAO placed the program on its high-risk list.

GAO said the Pentagon implemented quality assessment tools for measuinrg performance in both investigations and adjudications.

Gen. John Allen

Marine Corps Gen. John Allen is expected to leave his current post as top commander in Afghanistan and take over as head of U.S. European Command early next year, the Washington Post reports.

According to the Post, Navy Adm. James Stavridis, current head of European Command, has been asked to stay on for a few more months so Allen will have time to prepare for his new assignment.

Stavridis is serving a four-year term in that position and also serves as supreme allied commander for NATO in Europe.

Army Gen. David Rodriguez could succeed Allen as commander in Afghanistan, the Post reported, and Navy Vice Adm. Robert S. Harward, a Navy SEAL, also is a likely candidate.

Site: arb.ca.gov

The House Armed Services Committee wants to stop the Defense Department from spending more on alternate fuels than it would on traditional fossil fuels, Noah Shachtman from Wired Danger Room reports.

According to the report, the lawmakers are including the proposed measure in the fiscal 2013 budget bill in order to reduce military spending.

Such a measure would disable the U.S. Navy from continuing to fuel its Great Green Fleet, which is run with biofuels and set to have a two day demonstration in Hawaii in June, Shachtman reports.

Shachtman writes the Great Green Fleet was meant to be a step toward achieving Navy Secretary Ray Mabus’ priority to move the Navy toward having half of its power resources be renewable by 2020.

The Navy was planning to fully deploy the fleet by 2016.

The fleet would be promising for the bioful industry’s growth, which could be endangered if lawmakers mar the Pentagon from purchasing more expensive resources, Shachtman suggests in his report.

Shachtman cites testimony from Mabus suggesting that the cost of biofuel will come down and that the House shouldn’t concentrate on producing more ships over fuel type.

Mabus also suggested the U.S. needs to secure a reliable domestic energy supply.

Richard Hale said 1,000 companies are expected to take part in the program and the Pentagon would be pleased to have more participants, Reuters’ Jim Wolf reported.

On Friday, the Pentagon announced the expansion of a joint program with DHS for sharing cybersecurity information with the defense industrial base.

Deputy Secretary Ashton Carter said at the time that companies have unclassified, but sensitive.], information on their systems and can be subject to cyber attacks and theft.

Three Internet service firms provide filtering and remediation services, according to the report.

Verizon spokesman Richard Young confirmed in an email to Reuters that his company is participating, while AT&T and CenturyLink did not respond for comment.

Site: NIST.gov

A recent job study found that the District of Columbia has a third of its residents working in the public sector, the Washington Business Journal’s G. Scott Thomas reports.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data compared non-farm job numbers with government jobs in each state.

Local, state and federal government entities employ 22.2 million workers nationwide, making for 16.7 percent of the nation’s 132.7 million member workforce, Thomas reports.

Followed by D.C. at 33.4 percent, Alaska has the second-most public sector workers at 25.8 percent.

Close behind were Wyoming, New Mexico and Mississippi, each having more than 22 percent of their workforce employed by the government.

Thomas additionally notes that West Virginia, Alabama, Montana, Hawaii and Oklahoma each have federal workforces crossing the 20 percent marker.

LightSquared said in a statement that it entered bankruptcy to give it time to “resolve the regulatory issues that have prevented it” from building the network, adding that it also filed recognition in Canada.

In February, the Federal Communications Commission withdrew preliminary approval after tests indicated the network interfered with GPS devices.

The House Science Committee heard testimony from concerned agencies and industry groups in September and some cited potential harmful effects on many services such as hurricane tracking and building flood defenses.

A group of companies wrote to the FCC in November asking the agency to restrict LightSquared from using the upper band of its spectrum, located close to the same frequencies used by GPS.

PCWorld reported that tests showed strong interference in the upper 10 megahertz band of LightSquared’s frequencies.