POL Sequester Budget Cuts?
- Thread starter rafter
- Start date
At the federal level they are talking about furloughing civilian employees. For us we are looking at 1 day a week for 22 weeks starting in mid April through the rest of the fiscal year. The navy is talking about having to tie up some vessels and stop or slow construction and maintenance on others. Most federal agencies will be affected similarly. I know that state funding will take a hit as well.
Still do not know how this will effect ANYTHING.
The "sequestration cuts" are cuts to the amount of INCREASE these budgets will have....
NOT CUTTING the current budget.
Let's say current budget for XYZ is 100,000.00, with an increase of 10% for next year.
Well, sequestration cuts will be a 7% increase for next year INSTEAD of the 10%........
Does any of this panic make sense???? Not to me....................
The "sequestration cuts" are cuts to the amount of INCREASE these budgets will have....
NOT CUTTING the current budget.
Let's say current budget for XYZ is 100,000.00, with an increase of 10% for next year.
Well, sequestration cuts will be a 7% increase for next year INSTEAD of the 10%........
Does any of this panic make sense???? Not to me....................
Last edited:
Found this at Canada Free Press
Sequester Hysteria
Author
- Arnold Ahlert (Bio and Archives) Tuesday, February 19, 2013
(0) Comments | Print friendly | Subscribe | Email Us
3
Obama administration and Democrat hysterics are once again out in force. Coordinating with their media propaganda pushers, they are attempting to convince the American public that “sequestration,” as in the mandatory spending cuts engendered by the budget ceiling debacle of 2011, amount to nothing less than economic Armageddon.
“Sequester is a blunt and indiscriminate instrument that poses a serious threat to our national security, domestic priorities and the economy,” said Danny Werfel, a senior official at the White House budget office, to reporters at a briefing.
While deep defense cuts should be reasonably feared, in other areas, the Democrats’ claim is utterly hyperbolic. In FY2013, the sequester would result in cuts totaling $85 billion. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), federal spending for 2012, excluding certain credit adjustments for items such as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), was $3.5 trillion. Assuming federal spending would stay completely flat, such a “massive” spending cut would comprise 2.4 percent of the 2013 budget. For perspective’s sake, as well as a good indication that flat federal spending is an elusive reality, it should be noted that Congress recently authorized a total of $60.2 billion in additional deficit spending for Hurricane Sandy relief.
Or more accurately, Congress authorized another unconscionable pork-fest that included relief for Hurricane Sandy. It also included billions of dollars for such items as FBI salaries, $2 billion for road construction across the country, funding for the Head Start program, roof repairs at the Smithsonian, $4 million for the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, $50 million for the National Park Service—and $16 billion for usage by 47 states to underwrite past and future events from 2011 through 2013. As of now, none of that spending has been offset by any cuts in other programs. In other words, even as the hysterics wax spasmodic about “gargantuan” cuts, Congress has just spent another $60.2 billion—meaning that even if the entire $85 billion in cuts for 2013 go into effect as scheduled, spending for this year will be reduced by all of $24.8 billion.
The long-term spending reductions are equally un-cataclysmic, especially when compared to the amount of deficit spending in which this administration has engaged. The entire amount of the spending cuts engendered by sequestration total $1.2 trillion—over ten years. Compare that to the deficits this administration has run over the last four years: in FY2009, the federal deficit was $1.4 trillion; in FY2010 it was $1.293 trillion; FY2011 totaled $1.3 trillion; and in FY2012, federal spending exceeded revenues by $1.089 trillion. That comes to more than $5 trillion of debt accumulated in just four years—on the books.
Off the book federal obligations, better known as “unfunded liabilities,” are almost incomprehensible. Americans get testy when they think of a federal government more than $16 trillion in debt. Yet America’s actual debt is $86.8 trillion, or 550% of GDP, when one counts all of the revenue the government needs to fund Social Security, Medicare, and federal employees’ future retirement benefits at the current time. In other words, sequestration is akin to subtracting a single grain of sand from a Sahara Desert of debt.
Now one would think that historically unprecedented levels of deficits and debt would chasten the president and the spendthrifts in the Democratic Party. One would be completely and utterly wrong. In his State of the Union speech, Obama flat out lied about sequestration. “In 2011, Congress passed a law saying that if both parties couldn’t agree on a plan to reach our deficit goal, about a trillion dollars’ worth of budget cuts would automatically go into effect this year.” We already know that only $85 billion will be cut this year.
Yet he compounded that lie by doing what he does best, namely, stoking fear. “These sudden, harsh, arbitrary cuts would jeopardize our military readiness, they’d devastate priorities like education and energy and medical research. They would certainly slow our recovery and cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs. And that’s why Democrats, Republicans, business leaders, and economists have already said that these cuts—known here in Washington as ‘the sequester’—are a really bad idea.”
Which brings us to something most Americans don’t know: sequestration was Barack Obama’s “bad idea.” Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, who became famous when he uncovered the Watergate scandal, wrote a book chronicling eighteen months of efforts by leaders in both parties to revitalize the American economy. According to Woodward, former White House chief of staff Jack Lew brought up sequestration on behalf of the president. Even the left-leaning Washington Post “fact-checked” Obama’s claim that Congress “proposed” the sequester, and gave it their “whopper” rating of Four Pinocchios, the highest level of mendacity on the scale.
Obama proposed the sequester because he was certain that Republicans would fold, due to the reality that fifty percent of the cuts come from the military. This confidence was no doubt compounded by the reality that the so-called cuts to entitlement programs completely exempted Social Security, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), refundable tax credits, veterans’ compensation, and federal retirement, even as it imposed cuts on Medicare providers.
Unfortunately for the president and his party, Republicans haven’t folded for three reasons. One, they gave into Obama on the fiscal cliff deal and allowed taxes to be raised. As of now, they are not prepared to accept any further tax hikes to “offset” the impending cuts.
Two, a large number of Republicans believe that the only way to get any serious spending cuts is to accept that they will include cuts to military spending. Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), for instance, explained to Politico that if Republicans “don’t take defense spending seriously, it undermines our credibility on other spending issues. When we speak candidly about a spending problem and we then seek to puff up the defense budget and (sic) it leads people to believe that we aren’t taking the problem seriously.”
Yet it is the third reason that likely animates Republicans the most. Since the cuts are automatic, they don’t have to negotiate with a duplicitous president, hector Senate Democrats to pass a budget for the first time in almost four years, or have yet another House budget proposal submitted to the Senate routinely dismissed. They merely have to sit back and do…nothing.
Thus, the proverbial ball is back in the administration’s court. And with an ample assist from the media, Democrats and administration officials have embarked on a blitzkrieg campaign best described as a combination of Orwellian denial, and shameless fear-mongering. With regard to the former strategy, a number of prominent Democrats are suddenly promoting the idea that America doesn’t have a spending problem at all. That’s reportedly what President Obama told John Boehner. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) echoed that contention, saying we don’t have a “spending problem,” but a “priority problem.” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) mysteriously concluded that America doesn’t have a spending problem, but a “paying-for problem.” And Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) has decided that the real problem isn’t spending, but a “misallocation of capital, a misallocation of wealth.” In other words, as far as Harkin is concerned, government’s chief function is to pick winners and losers in the private sector, and then decide how much wealth is too much for the winners to amass.
As bad as these efforts to deny reality are, they pale in comparison to the implementation of the latter strategy, as in the onslaught of fear-mongering this administration has engendered. The White House has published a “fact” sheet that is a laundry list of doom-and-gloom Americans would be forced to endure if the sequester occurs. Itemized entries include kicking kids out of Head Start (despite the Head Start funding contained in the Sandy spending package), as well as leaving Americans vulnerable to food poisoning, crime, disease, a lack of emergency responders, untreated mental health patients, interruptions in meals and/or nutrition programs for seniors, women, infants and children, and a host of other calamities that will befall the nation if such “massive cuts”—amounting to all of about one half of one percent of GDP—kick in.
Yet the most despicable example of ginning up unnecessary fear was revealed by the Washington Times on Valentine’s Day. The Obama administration is claiming that if the sequester happens, furloughs for food inspectors would cause shutdowns of meat-processing plants. As a result, more than 2 billion pounds of beef and pork, and more than 3 billion pounds of poultry will never make it to market, precipitating shortages and price spikes. The implication is clear: either Republicans cave to our demands, or they will be blamed for forcing Americans to embrace a vegetarian lifestyle!
Such threats are completely unsurprising. Behind the facade of hope and change this administration and its media cheerleaders promote lives the extortionist “never let a crisis go to waste” mentality that truly animates those for whom such thuggish, “Chicago-style” tactics are considered business as usual. After four years and two victorious elections, Barack Obama remains, at heart, not a president, but a community organizer completely comfortable with the politics of demonization, division and fear.
Again, as Americans contemplate the “devastation” that will supposedly befall us, the Wall Street Journal reminds us that perspective is everything. “Fear not,” they write. “As always in Washington when there is talk of cutting spending, most of the hysteria is baseless….In Mr. Obama’s first two years, while private businesses and households were spending less and deleveraging, federal domestic discretionary spending soared by 84% with some agencies doubling and tripling their budgets” (italic mine).
One last thing. More Americans need to become familiar with the concept of baseline budgeting. In simple terms, if an agency’s budget is $100, and they are expecting an increase of $10.00 next year, but they only get $8.00, politicians characterize that as a $2.00 cut in spending. Concerning the entire $1.2 trillion in “cuts” engendered by the sequester, it must be understood that they are not really cuts at all. They are really a lowering of the projected increase in federal spending going forward. The CBO cuts through the fog. “For the 2014—2023 period, deficits in CBO’s baseline projections total $7.0 trillion. With such deficits, federal debt would remain above 73 percent of GDP—far higher than the 39 percent average seen over the past four decades,” it reports.
Thus, over the next decade, we are “cutting” our way to adding another $7 trillion of debt to the $16-plus trillion we have already amassed. As far as the administration, Democrats and their media enablers are concerned, any attempt to mitigate that “paying-for problem” will turn America into a Third World nation of vegetable eaters. Yet the simple truth remains inarguable: absent the genuine entitlement reform critically necessary to get our spending under control, we are headed for national bankruptcy. At that point, even vegetables may be a luxury item.
Sequester Hysteria
Author
- Arnold Ahlert (Bio and Archives) Tuesday, February 19, 2013
(0) Comments | Print friendly | Subscribe | Email Us
3
Obama administration and Democrat hysterics are once again out in force. Coordinating with their media propaganda pushers, they are attempting to convince the American public that “sequestration,” as in the mandatory spending cuts engendered by the budget ceiling debacle of 2011, amount to nothing less than economic Armageddon.
“Sequester is a blunt and indiscriminate instrument that poses a serious threat to our national security, domestic priorities and the economy,” said Danny Werfel, a senior official at the White House budget office, to reporters at a briefing.
While deep defense cuts should be reasonably feared, in other areas, the Democrats’ claim is utterly hyperbolic. In FY2013, the sequester would result in cuts totaling $85 billion. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), federal spending for 2012, excluding certain credit adjustments for items such as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), was $3.5 trillion. Assuming federal spending would stay completely flat, such a “massive” spending cut would comprise 2.4 percent of the 2013 budget. For perspective’s sake, as well as a good indication that flat federal spending is an elusive reality, it should be noted that Congress recently authorized a total of $60.2 billion in additional deficit spending for Hurricane Sandy relief.
Or more accurately, Congress authorized another unconscionable pork-fest that included relief for Hurricane Sandy. It also included billions of dollars for such items as FBI salaries, $2 billion for road construction across the country, funding for the Head Start program, roof repairs at the Smithsonian, $4 million for the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, $50 million for the National Park Service—and $16 billion for usage by 47 states to underwrite past and future events from 2011 through 2013. As of now, none of that spending has been offset by any cuts in other programs. In other words, even as the hysterics wax spasmodic about “gargantuan” cuts, Congress has just spent another $60.2 billion—meaning that even if the entire $85 billion in cuts for 2013 go into effect as scheduled, spending for this year will be reduced by all of $24.8 billion.
The long-term spending reductions are equally un-cataclysmic, especially when compared to the amount of deficit spending in which this administration has engaged. The entire amount of the spending cuts engendered by sequestration total $1.2 trillion—over ten years. Compare that to the deficits this administration has run over the last four years: in FY2009, the federal deficit was $1.4 trillion; in FY2010 it was $1.293 trillion; FY2011 totaled $1.3 trillion; and in FY2012, federal spending exceeded revenues by $1.089 trillion. That comes to more than $5 trillion of debt accumulated in just four years—on the books.
Off the book federal obligations, better known as “unfunded liabilities,” are almost incomprehensible. Americans get testy when they think of a federal government more than $16 trillion in debt. Yet America’s actual debt is $86.8 trillion, or 550% of GDP, when one counts all of the revenue the government needs to fund Social Security, Medicare, and federal employees’ future retirement benefits at the current time. In other words, sequestration is akin to subtracting a single grain of sand from a Sahara Desert of debt.
Now one would think that historically unprecedented levels of deficits and debt would chasten the president and the spendthrifts in the Democratic Party. One would be completely and utterly wrong. In his State of the Union speech, Obama flat out lied about sequestration. “In 2011, Congress passed a law saying that if both parties couldn’t agree on a plan to reach our deficit goal, about a trillion dollars’ worth of budget cuts would automatically go into effect this year.” We already know that only $85 billion will be cut this year.
Yet he compounded that lie by doing what he does best, namely, stoking fear. “These sudden, harsh, arbitrary cuts would jeopardize our military readiness, they’d devastate priorities like education and energy and medical research. They would certainly slow our recovery and cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs. And that’s why Democrats, Republicans, business leaders, and economists have already said that these cuts—known here in Washington as ‘the sequester’—are a really bad idea.”
Which brings us to something most Americans don’t know: sequestration was Barack Obama’s “bad idea.” Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, who became famous when he uncovered the Watergate scandal, wrote a book chronicling eighteen months of efforts by leaders in both parties to revitalize the American economy. According to Woodward, former White House chief of staff Jack Lew brought up sequestration on behalf of the president. Even the left-leaning Washington Post “fact-checked” Obama’s claim that Congress “proposed” the sequester, and gave it their “whopper” rating of Four Pinocchios, the highest level of mendacity on the scale.
Obama proposed the sequester because he was certain that Republicans would fold, due to the reality that fifty percent of the cuts come from the military. This confidence was no doubt compounded by the reality that the so-called cuts to entitlement programs completely exempted Social Security, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), refundable tax credits, veterans’ compensation, and federal retirement, even as it imposed cuts on Medicare providers.
Unfortunately for the president and his party, Republicans haven’t folded for three reasons. One, they gave into Obama on the fiscal cliff deal and allowed taxes to be raised. As of now, they are not prepared to accept any further tax hikes to “offset” the impending cuts.
Two, a large number of Republicans believe that the only way to get any serious spending cuts is to accept that they will include cuts to military spending. Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), for instance, explained to Politico that if Republicans “don’t take defense spending seriously, it undermines our credibility on other spending issues. When we speak candidly about a spending problem and we then seek to puff up the defense budget and (sic) it leads people to believe that we aren’t taking the problem seriously.”
Yet it is the third reason that likely animates Republicans the most. Since the cuts are automatic, they don’t have to negotiate with a duplicitous president, hector Senate Democrats to pass a budget for the first time in almost four years, or have yet another House budget proposal submitted to the Senate routinely dismissed. They merely have to sit back and do…nothing.
Thus, the proverbial ball is back in the administration’s court. And with an ample assist from the media, Democrats and administration officials have embarked on a blitzkrieg campaign best described as a combination of Orwellian denial, and shameless fear-mongering. With regard to the former strategy, a number of prominent Democrats are suddenly promoting the idea that America doesn’t have a spending problem at all. That’s reportedly what President Obama told John Boehner. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) echoed that contention, saying we don’t have a “spending problem,” but a “priority problem.” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) mysteriously concluded that America doesn’t have a spending problem, but a “paying-for problem.” And Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) has decided that the real problem isn’t spending, but a “misallocation of capital, a misallocation of wealth.” In other words, as far as Harkin is concerned, government’s chief function is to pick winners and losers in the private sector, and then decide how much wealth is too much for the winners to amass.
As bad as these efforts to deny reality are, they pale in comparison to the implementation of the latter strategy, as in the onslaught of fear-mongering this administration has engendered. The White House has published a “fact” sheet that is a laundry list of doom-and-gloom Americans would be forced to endure if the sequester occurs. Itemized entries include kicking kids out of Head Start (despite the Head Start funding contained in the Sandy spending package), as well as leaving Americans vulnerable to food poisoning, crime, disease, a lack of emergency responders, untreated mental health patients, interruptions in meals and/or nutrition programs for seniors, women, infants and children, and a host of other calamities that will befall the nation if such “massive cuts”—amounting to all of about one half of one percent of GDP—kick in.
Yet the most despicable example of ginning up unnecessary fear was revealed by the Washington Times on Valentine’s Day. The Obama administration is claiming that if the sequester happens, furloughs for food inspectors would cause shutdowns of meat-processing plants. As a result, more than 2 billion pounds of beef and pork, and more than 3 billion pounds of poultry will never make it to market, precipitating shortages and price spikes. The implication is clear: either Republicans cave to our demands, or they will be blamed for forcing Americans to embrace a vegetarian lifestyle!
Such threats are completely unsurprising. Behind the facade of hope and change this administration and its media cheerleaders promote lives the extortionist “never let a crisis go to waste” mentality that truly animates those for whom such thuggish, “Chicago-style” tactics are considered business as usual. After four years and two victorious elections, Barack Obama remains, at heart, not a president, but a community organizer completely comfortable with the politics of demonization, division and fear.
Again, as Americans contemplate the “devastation” that will supposedly befall us, the Wall Street Journal reminds us that perspective is everything. “Fear not,” they write. “As always in Washington when there is talk of cutting spending, most of the hysteria is baseless….In Mr. Obama’s first two years, while private businesses and households were spending less and deleveraging, federal domestic discretionary spending soared by 84% with some agencies doubling and tripling their budgets” (italic mine).
One last thing. More Americans need to become familiar with the concept of baseline budgeting. In simple terms, if an agency’s budget is $100, and they are expecting an increase of $10.00 next year, but they only get $8.00, politicians characterize that as a $2.00 cut in spending. Concerning the entire $1.2 trillion in “cuts” engendered by the sequester, it must be understood that they are not really cuts at all. They are really a lowering of the projected increase in federal spending going forward. The CBO cuts through the fog. “For the 2014—2023 period, deficits in CBO’s baseline projections total $7.0 trillion. With such deficits, federal debt would remain above 73 percent of GDP—far higher than the 39 percent average seen over the past four decades,” it reports.
Thus, over the next decade, we are “cutting” our way to adding another $7 trillion of debt to the $16-plus trillion we have already amassed. As far as the administration, Democrats and their media enablers are concerned, any attempt to mitigate that “paying-for problem” will turn America into a Third World nation of vegetable eaters. Yet the simple truth remains inarguable: absent the genuine entitlement reform critically necessary to get our spending under control, we are headed for national bankruptcy. At that point, even vegetables may be a luxury item.
Lynx
Senior Member
They were talking about this on FOX News today. Obama was going on about how first responders would be some of the hardest hit. FWIW, the commentators pointed out that Obama has a great deal of discretion regarding where the cuts are made. If he really was concerned about it, he could cut the money from green energy programs and the like instead. But it serves his purpose to have the man-on-the-street think his house will be allowed to burn to the ground if this goes through.
I've heard and read this a number of times.Someone smarter than me will have to figure it all out.It should'nt be that hard to discover how it'll all shake out,but it is.So confusing.
If it's true the cuts will only affect a small part of the budget increases,then it's obvious we're being played by both sides - they're wanting to scare us.And I,for one,don't appreciate it one damn bit.
Oilpatch Hand
3-Bomb General, TB2K Army
Funny thing, though...there are few, if any, local "first responders" who are paid by the federal government. Almost all are municipal or county/parish employees.
I wonder how Barry the Boob could be unaware of this reality. Is he just that ill-informed?
happyretiree
Veteran Member
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...equestration&p=4733349&highlight=#post4733349
I posted this yesterday. Not sure if this will help.
I posted this yesterday. Not sure if this will help.
mortgageboss
Contributing Member
I don't buy this "jobs will be lost if the sequestration happens" bs.
These are not real cuts, only cuts in increases.
I think the agency's who discover they dont get as big as an increase as last year, will find ways to adjust.
The liberals are just trying to scare the uninformed with these threats.
Our local school district does the same thing. If you dont agree to this levy, we will lay off teachers....
I'm disgusted by this and I've let my congressman know it.
These are not real cuts, only cuts in increases.
I think the agency's who discover they dont get as big as an increase as last year, will find ways to adjust.
The liberals are just trying to scare the uninformed with these threats.
Our local school district does the same thing. If you dont agree to this levy, we will lay off teachers....
I'm disgusted by this and I've let my congressman know it.
fairbanksb
Freedom Isn't Free
Pink slips being printed as Congress vacations, defense industry likely to cut thousands of jobs
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/18/congress-leaves-town-with-layoffs-in-its-wake/
Hundreds of Pentagon-related companies large and small are preparing to lay off thousands of employees as Congress takes a recess this week, so far unable to agree on how to undo automatic military spending cuts set to begin March 1.
BAE Systems Inc., a global giant that provides an array of goods and services for the military, estimates that it will have to lay off as many as 4,000 workers this year, including technicians who work on aircraft, ships and vehicles and who earn an average of $50,000 a year.
SEE RELATED: Red state Democrats in danger for pressing Obama’s agenda
Meanwhile, Ammcon Corp. of Portland, Ore., which makes pipe joints and flanges for aircraft carriers and submarines, says it will have to lay off about 25 percent of its 45 employees if the defense spending cuts begin March 1.
These and other defense contractors are bracing for automatic, across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration — which could lead to as many as 1.2 million lost jobs, according to an estimate by Stephen S. Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University.
Under sequestration, the Pentagon would be required to cut $46 billion from its budget by Sept. 30 and as much as $500 billion from its 10-year spending plan.
Assembly workers for military contractors are at risk of job losses as a result of the uncertainty of sequestration. (Associated Press)
Enlarge Photo
Assembly workers for military contractors are at risk of job losses as ... more >
In addition, the continuing resolution that funds the Pentagon has held spending at 2012 levels and is due to expire March 27, when Congress must renew the resolution or approve a defense budget bill.
“The cloud of uncertainty from sequestration already has had a profound impact on the way our industry is able to deploy its capital and invests in facilities, jobs and new product development,” said BAE spokesman Brian Roehrkasse.
Under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, most companies with more than 100 employees are required to give a minimum of 60 days’ advance notice of mass layoffs and plant closings.
SEE RELATED: Sequestration becomes partisan game of political chicken on the Hill
But smaller companies that are not required to give advance notice could be the ones most affected by sequestration.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter told a congressional hearing last week that “60 to 70 cents of every dollar that we contract ends up in a subcontractor, and many of these are small businesses that don’t have the capital structure to be able to withstand blows.”
Contractors and subcontractors
Sequestration also is driving some jobs overseas.
First Line Technologies of Chantilly, Va., makes cooling vests for troops to wear underneath their body armor and employs about a dozen people. Having experienced rapid growth last year, it was readying to hire about a dozen more workers before the uncertainty over sequestration developed, company President Amit Kapoor said.
Now, First Line Technologies is looking to market its products overseas and will hire employees abroad. Its strategy is to move quickly into overseas markets to avoid layoffs or having to close.
“The biggest killer for us last year was the uncertainty,” Mr. Kapoor said. “Even if there’s an eleventh-hour deal made [on sequestration], it’s probably going to kick the can down the road.”
He also noted that military spending cuts will hurt subcontractors: “A lot of our small businesses that we deal with, they’re needing a lot of the money upfront. It’s a trickle-down effect. As it affects us, it’s going to affect our subcontractors and business partners.”
Military leaders have said sequestration will force the Pentagon to lay off or furlough thousands of civilian workers; delay maintenance on ships, aircraft and vehicles; cancel contracts for new weapons; and postpone troop deployments.
The effects of such actions can rock the companies and the communities where they are located.
Budget uncertainty has forced the Army not to issue any orders for depot maintenance beyond January, an Army spokesman said.
Many of the depots are in small towns, such as the Letterkenny Army Depot at Chambersburg, Pa. According to the depot’s website, it is the largest employer in Franklin County, with more than 3,600 employees.
Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, Army chief of staff, told Congress last week that fewer orders at military depots would result in layoffs for 10,000 civilian workers across the country.
Loss of expertise, experience
Gen. Odierno said the Army would have to reduce purchase orders to more than 3,000 small companies and “our assessment tells us 1,100 of those are then at moderate to high risk of bankruptcy if we have to execute [defense cuts] this year.”
Defense contractors and military leaders say the effects of sequestration will extend beyond job losses.
If defense purchases of certain products that meet military specifications halt, the manufacturers of those items might have to discontinue making them, company officials say.
“I am concerned, and our industry partners are concerned, that some of them just aren’t going to make it, and then you don’t have a supplier for a critical component,” Mr. Carter testified last week.
Milwaukee Valve Co. Inc. of New Berlin, Wis., makes bronze valves for aircraft carriers and other ships that play critical roles in controlling the flow of water or fuel throughout vessels.
Two weeks ago, the Navy announced that it was delaying a major overhaul for the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. Under sequestration, construction for the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy would be delayed.
“Carriers are just massive and need lots and lots of pipe,” Milwaukee Valve President Rick Giannini said, adding that one carrier requires as many as 10,000 valves.
Meeting Navy specifications requires time, testing and inspection, and lower-quality products could cause huge problems, he said.
“You can’t just take a product off the shelf and say it’s similar because it’s got to meet all of those specific specifications,” Mr. Giannini said, adding that a major slowdown in ship repairs or construction occurs would force his company to focus on products it makes in other countries.
Darrell Grow, chief operating officer of the flange-making firm Ammcon Corp., said it would take months and tens of thousands of dollars to replace specialized welders. Each welder takes at least six months of training and testing, and costs about $10,000 to become certified to work on Navy ships, he said.
“When I need them to come back to do future work, they’re not going to be there for me and I have to start over,” Mr. Grow said.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/18/congress-leaves-town-with-layoffs-in-its-wake/
Hundreds of Pentagon-related companies large and small are preparing to lay off thousands of employees as Congress takes a recess this week, so far unable to agree on how to undo automatic military spending cuts set to begin March 1.
BAE Systems Inc., a global giant that provides an array of goods and services for the military, estimates that it will have to lay off as many as 4,000 workers this year, including technicians who work on aircraft, ships and vehicles and who earn an average of $50,000 a year.
SEE RELATED: Red state Democrats in danger for pressing Obama’s agenda
Meanwhile, Ammcon Corp. of Portland, Ore., which makes pipe joints and flanges for aircraft carriers and submarines, says it will have to lay off about 25 percent of its 45 employees if the defense spending cuts begin March 1.
These and other defense contractors are bracing for automatic, across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration — which could lead to as many as 1.2 million lost jobs, according to an estimate by Stephen S. Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University.
Under sequestration, the Pentagon would be required to cut $46 billion from its budget by Sept. 30 and as much as $500 billion from its 10-year spending plan.
Assembly workers for military contractors are at risk of job losses as a result of the uncertainty of sequestration. (Associated Press)
Enlarge Photo
Assembly workers for military contractors are at risk of job losses as ... more >
In addition, the continuing resolution that funds the Pentagon has held spending at 2012 levels and is due to expire March 27, when Congress must renew the resolution or approve a defense budget bill.
“The cloud of uncertainty from sequestration already has had a profound impact on the way our industry is able to deploy its capital and invests in facilities, jobs and new product development,” said BAE spokesman Brian Roehrkasse.
Under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, most companies with more than 100 employees are required to give a minimum of 60 days’ advance notice of mass layoffs and plant closings.
SEE RELATED: Sequestration becomes partisan game of political chicken on the Hill
But smaller companies that are not required to give advance notice could be the ones most affected by sequestration.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter told a congressional hearing last week that “60 to 70 cents of every dollar that we contract ends up in a subcontractor, and many of these are small businesses that don’t have the capital structure to be able to withstand blows.”
Contractors and subcontractors
Sequestration also is driving some jobs overseas.
First Line Technologies of Chantilly, Va., makes cooling vests for troops to wear underneath their body armor and employs about a dozen people. Having experienced rapid growth last year, it was readying to hire about a dozen more workers before the uncertainty over sequestration developed, company President Amit Kapoor said.
Now, First Line Technologies is looking to market its products overseas and will hire employees abroad. Its strategy is to move quickly into overseas markets to avoid layoffs or having to close.
“The biggest killer for us last year was the uncertainty,” Mr. Kapoor said. “Even if there’s an eleventh-hour deal made [on sequestration], it’s probably going to kick the can down the road.”
He also noted that military spending cuts will hurt subcontractors: “A lot of our small businesses that we deal with, they’re needing a lot of the money upfront. It’s a trickle-down effect. As it affects us, it’s going to affect our subcontractors and business partners.”
Military leaders have said sequestration will force the Pentagon to lay off or furlough thousands of civilian workers; delay maintenance on ships, aircraft and vehicles; cancel contracts for new weapons; and postpone troop deployments.
The effects of such actions can rock the companies and the communities where they are located.
Budget uncertainty has forced the Army not to issue any orders for depot maintenance beyond January, an Army spokesman said.
Many of the depots are in small towns, such as the Letterkenny Army Depot at Chambersburg, Pa. According to the depot’s website, it is the largest employer in Franklin County, with more than 3,600 employees.
Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, Army chief of staff, told Congress last week that fewer orders at military depots would result in layoffs for 10,000 civilian workers across the country.
Loss of expertise, experience
Gen. Odierno said the Army would have to reduce purchase orders to more than 3,000 small companies and “our assessment tells us 1,100 of those are then at moderate to high risk of bankruptcy if we have to execute [defense cuts] this year.”
Defense contractors and military leaders say the effects of sequestration will extend beyond job losses.
If defense purchases of certain products that meet military specifications halt, the manufacturers of those items might have to discontinue making them, company officials say.
“I am concerned, and our industry partners are concerned, that some of them just aren’t going to make it, and then you don’t have a supplier for a critical component,” Mr. Carter testified last week.
Milwaukee Valve Co. Inc. of New Berlin, Wis., makes bronze valves for aircraft carriers and other ships that play critical roles in controlling the flow of water or fuel throughout vessels.
Two weeks ago, the Navy announced that it was delaying a major overhaul for the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. Under sequestration, construction for the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy would be delayed.
“Carriers are just massive and need lots and lots of pipe,” Milwaukee Valve President Rick Giannini said, adding that one carrier requires as many as 10,000 valves.
Meeting Navy specifications requires time, testing and inspection, and lower-quality products could cause huge problems, he said.
“You can’t just take a product off the shelf and say it’s similar because it’s got to meet all of those specific specifications,” Mr. Giannini said, adding that a major slowdown in ship repairs or construction occurs would force his company to focus on products it makes in other countries.
Darrell Grow, chief operating officer of the flange-making firm Ammcon Corp., said it would take months and tens of thousands of dollars to replace specialized welders. Each welder takes at least six months of training and testing, and costs about $10,000 to become certified to work on Navy ships, he said.
“When I need them to come back to do future work, they’re not going to be there for me and I have to start over,” Mr. Grow said.
rafter
Since 1999
Thanks that is what I was looking for!
Budget cut warnings may prove harsher than reality
http://apnews.myway.com//article/201...DA4FK6IG0.html
Feb 16, 3:28 AM (ET)
By ALAN FRAM
WASHINGTON (AP) - Get ready for two weeks of intensifying warnings about how crucial, popular government services are about to wither - including many threats that could eventually come true.
President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans made no progress last week in heading off $85 billion in budget-wide cuts that automatically start taking effect March 1. Lacking a bipartisan deal to avoid them and hoping to heap blame and pressure on GOP lawmakers, the administration is offering vivid details about the cuts' consequences: trimmed defense contracts, less secure U.S. embassies, furloughed air traffic controllers.
Past administrations have seldom hesitated to spotlight how budget standoffs would wilt programs the public values.
When a budget fight between President Bill Clinton and congressional Republicans led to two government shutdowns, in 1995 and 1996, some threats came true, like padlocked national parks.
Others did not.
Clinton warned that Medicare recipients might lose medical treatment, feeding programs for the low-income elderly could end and treatment at veterans hospitals could be curtailed. All continued, thanks to contractors working for IOUs, local governments and charities stepping in and the budget impasse ending before serious damage occurred.
This time, at stake is not a federal shutdown but a so-called sequester. Between March 1 and Sept. 30 - the remainder of the government's budget year - it would mean reductions of 13 percent for defense programs and 9 percent for other programs, according to the White House budget office.
The cuts, plus nearly $1 trillion more over the coming decade, were concocted two years ago. Administration and congressional bargainers purposely made them so painful that everyone would be forced to reach a grand deficit-cutting compromise to avoid them.
Hasn't happened.
A look at the sequester and the chilling impact the administration says it would have, based on letters and testimony to Congress:
_A key reminder: Social Security, Medicare and veterans' benefits, Medicaid and a host of other benefit programs are exempted. The cuts take effect over a seven-month period; they don't all crash ashore on March 1. And if a bipartisan deal to ease them is ever reached, lawmakers could restore some or all of the money retroactively.
_On the other hand: Left in effect, these cuts are real even though their program-by-program impact is unclear. The law limits the administration's flexibility to protect favored initiatives, but the White House has told agencies to avoid cuts presenting "risks to life, safety or health" and to minimize harm to crucial services.
_Defense: Troops at war would be protected, but there'd be fewer Air Force flying hours, less training for some Army units and cuts in naval forces. A $3 billion cut in the military's Tricare health care system could diminish elective care for military families and retirees. And, in a warning to the private defense industry, the Pentagon said it would be "restructuring contracts to reduce their scope and cost."
_Health: The National Institutes of Health would lose $1.6 billion, trimming cancer research and drying up funds for hundreds of other research projects. Health departments would give 424,000 fewer tests for the AIDS virus. More than 373,000 people may not receive mental health services.
_Food and agriculture: About 600,000 low-income pregnant women and new mothers would lose food aid and nutrition education. Meat inspectors could be furloughed up to 15 days, shutting meatpacking plants intermittently and costing up to $10 billion in production losses.
_Homeland Security: Fewer border agents and facilities for detained illegal immigrants. Reduced Coast Guard air and sea operations, furloughed Secret Service agents and weakened efforts against cyberthreats to computer networks. The Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster relief fund would lose more than $1 billion.
_Education: Seventy thousand Head Start pupils would be removed from the pre-kindergarten program. Layoffs of 10,000 teachers and thousands of other staffers because of cuts in federal dollars that state and local governments use for schools. Cuts for programs for disabled and other special-needs students.
_Transportation: Most of the Federal Aviation Administration's 47,000 employees would face furloughs, including air traffic controllers, for an average of 11 days.
_Environment: Diminished Environmental Protection Agency monitoring of oil spills, air pollution and hazardous waste. The color-coded air quality forecasting system that keeps schoolchildren and others inside on bad-air days would be curtailed or eliminated. New models of cars and trucks could take longer to reach consumers because the EPA couldn't quickly validate that they meet emissions standards.
_State Department: Slow security improvements at overseas facilities, cuts in economic aid in Afghanistan and malaria control in Africa.
_Internal Revenue Service: Furloughed workers would reduce the IRS' ability to review returns, detect fraud and answer taxpayers' questions. It offered no specifics.
_FBI: Furloughs and a hiring freeze would have the equivalent impact of cutting 2,285 employees, including 775 agents. Every FBI employee would be furloughed 14 workdays.
_Interior Department: Hours and service would be trimmed at all 398 national parks, and up to 128 wildlife refuges could be shuttered. Oil, gas and coal development on public lands and offshore waters would be diminished because the agency would be less able to issue permits, conduct environmental reviews and inspect facilities.
_Labor: More than 3.8 million people jobless for six months or longer could see their unemployment benefits reduced by as much as 9.4 percent. Thousands of veterans would lose job counseling. Fewer Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspectors could mean 1,200 fewer visits to work sites. One million fewer people would get help finding or preparing for new jobs.
_NASA: Nearly $900 million in cuts, including funds to help private companies build capsules to send astronauts to the International Space Station.
_Housing: The Department of Housing and Urban Development said about 125,000 poor households could lose benefits from the agency's Housing Choice Voucher program and risk becoming homeless.
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Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein, Dina Cappiello, Matthew Daly, Philip Elliott, Sam Hananel, Mary Clare Jalonick, Richard Lardner, Joan Lowy, Andrew Miga, Lauran Neergaard, Stephen Ohlemacher and Pete Yost contributed to this report