Congress is moving to overhaul the nation’s leading job program for Americans with severe disabilities amid an investigation of financial fraud at its top contractor and the discovery of violations at other charities.

A Senate committee is drafting bipartisan legislation to overhaul the $2 billion-a-year Javits-Wagner-O’Day program, while the tiny government agency that oversees it has already enacted some reforms and intends to propose tougher measures in coming months to protect taxpayers and the program’s 48,000 workers from abuses.

The program was designed to create jobs for blind and severely disabled workers. The changes follow an investigation published in March by The Oregonian newspaper of Portland, Ore., which reported skyrocketing executive pay at major charities in the program at the same time they increasingly hired workers with only mild disabilities or none at all.

Since then, the former president of a Texas charity that was the federal program’s top contractor has come under criminal investigation. His nonprofit has sued him for $30 million, alleging embezzlement.

The presidentially appointed committee that oversees the program has adopted a new strategic plan that calls for accountability. It also launched audits to determine whether other big charity contractors were using enough workers with severe disabilities to qualify for the government contracts.

Under the 35-year-old program, charities can get guaranteed contracts to provide such things as janitorial or food services, military clothing or other goods to federal agencies. To be eligible, 75 percent of the labor must be performed by people with severe disabilities. More than 600 nonprofits from Maine to Oregon participate.

The oversight panel for the program, now being renamed AbilityOne, elected two people with disabilities to its top leadership slots.

“This program is now under public scrutiny,” said Jim Omvig, the new vice chairman, who is blind. “The press is watching. That’s going to mean Congress is watching more closely than it ever has.”

In Congress, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., the incoming chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said he intends to introduce reform legislation next year. The bipartisan measure would be an extension of a proposal that the outgoing chairman, Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., has been working on for more than a year.

The bulk of changes came after publication of The Oregonian’s two-part series showing how surges in military contracts had doubled program sales in recent years. Chief executives at the top 50 contractors had seen their pay and benefits increase an average 57 percent to $248,287. Yet many workers at their nonprofits earned less than the minimum wage.

The stories also showed how workers with mild or nonexistent disabilities – such as nasal polyps and poor English – got jobs intended for people with severe disabilities, such as cerebral palsy and mental retardation.

The program’s two-year strategic plan, adopted in October, cites “increasing emphasis on governance, effective stewardship, and accountability, resulting from negative media attention and critical scrutiny (to some extent warranted). … Both policy change and remedial public relations are necessary.”