Carter On Sequestration Tightrope At DoD (Deputy Defense Secretary Offers to Take 20% paycut)

Early Bird ^ | 30 Jan 13 | Kate Brannen

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Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter would be exempt from Pentagon furloughs if they happened under sequestration, but he said Wednesday he'd be willing to give back a fifth of his pay each month as a gesture of solidarity with his department's 800,000 civilian workers.

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“I used to be hopeful and optimistic and now I’m hopeful,” Carter told POLITICO in an interview.

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That wouldn’t be an across-the-board problem for the Pentagon like sequestration, Carter said, but it would become a huge problem for the department’s operations and maintenance accounts. Service officials have been spending at a rate that presumed about a 5 percent increase like the one they included in last February’s budget request, and if that bump in funding does not materialize, it would only compound the problems from sequestration.

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Up until Jan. 1, the Pentagon bet that Congress would act. Now, that is clearly still the hope, but doubt has set in.

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Hoping to dispel the perception that most civilian workers are bureaucrats sitting in Washington, Carter said 86 percent of DoD civilians live outside the Beltway.

“They’re not office workers,” he said. “They’re depot workers who overhaul airplanes. They’re shipyard workers.” --- One savings tool at their disposal would be furloughing civilian employees one day a week starting in mid-April. And even though Carter, the secretary of Defense and the services’ top civilian leaders would be exempt, Carter at least said he plans to surrender part of his paycheck — he makes about $179,000 per year, according to the Office of Personnel Management — if the Pentagon is asking the same of its workers.

“Under the law, political appointees are not civilian employees subject to furloughs. Otherwise, at every rank our civilian employees would be subject to furloughs.

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If you read this guy's bio (Dr. Ashton Carter), he is pretty impressive despite him being a Democrat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashton_Carter

Yale, Harvard, Oxford, Stanford - he is no dummy.

You also have to admire his courage. He is offering to take a 20% pay cut to show solidarity with all of the Dept of Defense workers who will be furloughed because of sequestration, and he has a point that 44 percent of all DoD civilians are veterans. Moreover, not everyone affected by sequestration is a DC bureaucrat - shipyard workers, employees at defense plants, and every facet of our economy (especially those located near military bases) will be affected by these cuts.

Even liberals are admitting our economy just tanked because of the defense cuts (and those went into affect BEFORE sequestration).

Mock him if you want, but I think he puts his money where his mouth is taking a pay cut if everyone else is going to.

I think every Congressman, Senator, their staffs, Obama, Biden, and the White House staff should follow his lead.

They should ALL take a 20% pay cut if it is good enough for every DoD employee. Why shouldn't they pony up "their fair share?"