After Sequestration, A Shocking Proportion Of Government Spending Will Be On Entitlements
Posted on 02/21/2013 3:31:23 PM PST by SkyPilot
The Defense Department on Wednesday officially notified Congress that it plans to begin furloughing its 800,000 civilian employees across the country if automatic spending cuts begin March 1, estimating the states would lose a total of $4.86 billion in workers’ wages this year.
According to Pentagon estimates, among the hardest-hit states would be Virginia, which would have about 88,000 affected workers and salary losses of $660.9 million; California, with 62,600 workers and $419.7 million in lost wages; and Maryland, with 45,700 workers and $359.3 million in lost earnings.
“This is not a Beltway phenomenon,” Jessica L. Wright, the acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, told reporters at the Pentagon. “More than 80 percent of our civilians work outside of the D.C. metro area. They live and work in every state of the union.”
Under the furlough plan, civilian workers would be forced to take one day of unpaid leave each week for 22 weeks from late April through September, costing them about 20 percent of their pay during that time, Pentagon officials said.
In a written message, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told civilian workers that they “will be provided at least 30 days’ notice prior to executing a furlough and your benefits will be protected to the maximum extent possible.”
He added that the Pentagon “also will work to ensure that furloughs are executed in a consistent and appropriate manner.”
Mr. Panetta noted that the department has been funded by a continuing resolution that has limited spending to 2012 levels and said the effects of sequestration may be felt more intensely because of it.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
The country has to do some belt-tightening. And by “the country” I mean FedGov spending.
I’ll file this under “Good News”...
Why are there over 800,000 DoD civilians?
Civilian employees? Wouldn’t it be BETTER news if it were ‘government employees’? Oh no, 0bama would never hurt his army.
Great way to do it, exempt entitlements (including Medicaid, Social Security, Food Stamps, TANF, Section 8 housing) but cause tremendous harm to a Constitutional enterprise - the military.
If Congress Can't Compromise, Then America Will Have A 'Hollow Army'
Perhaps the Republican party deserves the internal split that it is about to endure. Good thing it is embracing amnesty for illegals. Now, there's something we can afford. As it alienates the military permanently, it will need new constituencies. Somehow though, I think the illegals will still vote for Democrats.
A furlough of one day per week is impending doom? There are plenty of people who would love to have 4 days per week of guaranteed work-I’m one of them. Someone please give these people some cheese to go with that whine...
This is a great chart, added to my library. Everything above Transportation can be lumped into a single category: Democrat Election Scheme. Admitedly, some Republicans play as well, but entitlement spending is all about income redistribution and giving their voter base free stuff with the only stipulation that you vote for them on election day, and, oh by the way, you give up your freedom and liberty in exchange.
Funny how the liberals at the NY Times and Wash Post are crying like stuck pigs over these tiny cuts.
Those papers have laid off or bought out nearly 50% of their employees since Obama took office. Yet they’re squealing over 3% or so “cuts”?
Why didn’t they squeal about their own 50% budget cuts?
Funny how the liberals at the NY Times and Wash Post are crying like stuck pigs over these tiny cuts.
Those papers have laid off or bought out nearly 50% of their employees since Obama took office. Yet they’re squealing over 3% or so “cuts”?
Why didn’t they squeal about their own 50% budget cuts?
This is shi!. Even if they were furloughed when back on the job they will get every penny of back pay. How does that sound to those suckers that believe the communists bull shi!.
If you are budgeted 100 pizzas you would now only be able to purchase 97.6 that is no massive cut and is not austere. Now if you cut all the pizzas that would be a cut. You would maybe be better served to make your own pizza as well.
...and this is bad news how? :)
You must be listening to Rush too much.
The cuts when compared as a percentage to the entire budget may look small, but 2/3rd of the budget (entitlements) are EXEMPT from sequestration. Of the remaining 1/3rd, Defense takes the biggest hit. On top of that, the total DoD bill for just this year is now projected to be over 13%, and since they can only touch a portion of the budget (military pay for instance is exempt), and they are halfway through the fiscal year, the cuts to the military are huge.
If you had 12 employees, and said you had to make cuts, but you were going to "exempt" 8 of them, and of the 4 remaining only 1 had to take the majority of the paycut, then the one employee takes it the most.
Same principle here, however, the "takers" of society are doing just fine, thank you. Obama and the Democrats fooled the Republicans into signing off on the sequester, and now the military will suffer great harm.
The GOP spin on this is all over the map. Last May, Paul Ryan said these cuts to the military had to be reversed.
Now he is cheerleading them.
Even Byron York is saying Boehner and the Republicans have lost their minds.
The GOP’s astonishingly bad message on sequester cuts
"In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner describes the upcoming sequester as a policy “that threatens U.S. national security, thousands of jobs and more.” Which leads to the question: Why would Republicans support a measure that threatens national security and thousands of jobs? Boehner and the GOP are determined to allow the $1.2 trillion sequester go into effect unless President Obama and Democrats agree to replacement cuts, of an equal amount, that target entitlement spending. If that doesn’t happen — and it seems entirely unlikely — the sequester goes into effect, with the GOP’s blessing. In addition, Boehner calls the cuts “deep,” when most conservatives emphasize that for the next year they amount to about $85 billion out of a $3,600 billion budget. Which leads to another question: Why would Boehner adopt the Democratic description of the cuts as “deep” when they would touch such a relatively small part of federal spending? The effect of Boehner’s argument is to make Obama seem reasonable in comparison.
Back to the Articles of Confederation!
No potus; no congress; no black-robed idiots; no alphabet-soup oppressive departments/agencies !!!!!
Howzat for belt-tightening !
;)
no kidding
Semper Watching!
*****
best way for this country to recover is to send the DC politicians home and tell them to stay there.
One way the military has been able to reduce their numbers has been to turn over a lot of non-combat jobs to civilians, particularly what we in the Navy call "shore duty" billets. For example, go to a typical Navy galley on base. A decade ago it would be staffed by Navy enlisted "Culinary Specialists" cooking up the food. Now it's a bunch of Filipinos manning the grills. Base weapons stations used to be great shore duty for Ordnancemen and Gunner's Mates. Now they're all staffed by retired AO and GM Chiefs. Training squadrons now employ civilian aircraft maintainers (typically retired Navy) rather than enlisted. Base personnel offices are all staffed by civilians as well as the Navy trimmed down their ranks and removed enlisted Yeomans and other admin rates from these jobs. Facilities are maintained and repaired by civilian contractors rather than Seabees. The list goes on and on. Heck, even the gates are manned by civilian security guards rather than Masters at Arms (Navy military police).
I'm sure the other branches are doing the same. The military figured they'd save money on benefits by bringing aboard civilians. I wouldn't be surprised if at the base I work at, civilians outnumber active duty sailors. And now they have to furlough them all.
They’re doing a pretty good job of understanding that low-information voters don’t know what “furlough” means.
Good. Furlough enough government “workers” and maybe they will stop supporting the type of pin-headed moron politicians that they do.
Well, you didn’t say that Byron York was against the “sequester”!
Never gonna happen. It’s like expecting tapeworms to get tired of the taste of s***.
Because it is cutting with an ax. It is not directed in the right places and it is insignificant to the total budget problem. It is a huge problem for individual DOD workers. I'm looking at a 20% reduction in my pay for a 7 month period.
That said, I think it is a bluff...or playing chicken.
See my post #11 on another thread
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2989749/posts?page=11#11
Many military installations are in solid Red districts. This is going to hurt Conservatives, while the Detroit, LA, D.C. and Boston crowd are going to be dancing in the streets.
LOL.
Notice the bureaucratic impulse in play here: the presumption in the Pentagon is that budget cuts are (or can be forced to be) temporary, so there is no need to actually look for costs which can be cut, programs that can be eliminated, or efficiencies that can be introduced without harming military readiness. Instead, the furlough of civilian employees requires no hard decisions and creates a maximal pool of disaffected voters — all the furloughed DoD employees and their families — opposed to the sequestration cuts. (Cancel a program employing 40,000 and you create 40,000 families opposed to the cut, but furlough 800,000 employees for 20 days out the year and there are 800,000 families calling their Congressmen.)
Not true. There is no promise that the civilians will be paid back pay.
There are quite a few younger employees, some with new children. Losing 1 day a week of pay is going to be a significant hardship for them.
Out of curiosity, why is this viewed as the GOPs fault? Not being sarcastic.
Well said...misleading headline. I’ll take that furlough too.
Why are entitlements exempt? Who are the idiots that agreed to that? Entitlements is where the cutting needs to take place. Hack the freeloaders, not the earners.
Thanks for doing the heavy lifting.
The ignorance of some of the Low Information FReepers on this thread and other places is truly stunning.
TO DOD Civilians along with other federal employees: BOO F__’in HOO!
In 2009 I took a 20% PERMANENT pay cut while my workload doubled just so the business I worked for could survive.
After 3 years and developing some new skills that were much more marketable, I found a much better paying, stable job.
Employment isn’t permanent, you may need to retrain yourself and NO ONE owns you a career!!
It’s called life and we folks in the private sector deal with situations like layoffs and paycuts EVERYDAY!!!
>> Obama and the Democrats fooled the Republicans into signing off on the sequester, and now the military will suffer great harm.
I thought it was obvious to everyone that Defense was targeted to bear the brunt.
$660.9 million divided by 88,000 is $7510? Maybe they need to explain the numbers a little better.
A large percentage of those DoD employees go on deployments and support the soldier in the fight. What do the employees of EPA, NEA, SSA, HUD, etc, etc, etc, support? Paperwork. I support flesh and blood and lives on the line.
No, that is a terrific question.
Obviously, when looking for villains in this, the Democrats are front and center. The idea for the Sequester came right out of the Obama White House (his OMB Director, Jack Lew).
Here is where the Republicans went off the tracks.
The not only agreed with the Sequester, they signed off on the formula that took the one agency that is Constitutional and represents the best of America (the military), and allowed it to bear the brunt of the cuts (it is 17% the budget and takes 50% of the cuts).
It gets better.
The Pentagon was already reeling from a $487 Billion cut that began in 2011. Those cuts are spread out over several years, but we are now 2 years into them. These were not "baseline budget" gimmick cuts either. The Army will have to cut 189,000 troops alone before sequestration - and that is just one small impact of what Obama and the Congress has allowed to happen.
These cuts go on for 10 years.
It gets even better.
During the "Fiscal Cliff" talks, the Republicans knew that they would have to raise taxes. But, that was all they concerned themselves with. The Sequester half of the Fiscal Cliff was "separated" from the deal, and even the Democrats were shocked that as midnight approached, it was they (not the Republicans) who addressed them.
This was the "old" Paul Ryan last May:
Military-Crippling Sequester Must Be Stopped
Here is the "new" Paul Ryan:
Paul Ryan insists Republicans are ready to let the sequester happen
Boehner and Cantor are the same - essentially "let it burn."
This is a new low even for the "Stupid Party."
They have chosen a path that:
1. Causes the loss of an estimated 2.1 million jobs and layoffs of hundreds of thousands
2. Harms the military and punished Constitutional national defense
3. Exempts the real cause of our explosion in debt - Entitlements
4. Hands Obama and the Democrats a political gift by allowing themselves (not the Republicans) to be seen as the defenders of the military
It is all incredibly shortsighted and wrong, but the GOP is determined to hold onto this rock as tightly as they can while they sink to the bottom of the lake.
The folks on this board who want to see it all happen are going to get their "wish." I read this morning that a GOP staffer said they will eventually agree to fund the government (read: Entitlements) ad infinitum come the end of March, but will again "separate" the Sequester from the talks and will ensure that they drastic cuts (which punish Defense the most) will happen.
Unfrickin believable.
Military-Crippling Sequester Must Be Stopped
By the way, I love your tagline.
Civilian support personnel in the war zone(s) are exempt.
Based on these numbers alone, the increase in DoD contractors (which is not included in the above numbers), and the modern difference in the Federal Civilian workforce of today versus 1966, and the difference in the Federal Civilian DoD workforce and the Active Duty, and the reduction in DoD weapons systems acquisition projects, I have to believe we can sustain significant reductions in the DoD civilian work force and maintain a necessary level of defense readiness.
In today's military, what is the correct percentage of Active Duty, Ready Reserve, DoD Civilians, and DoD Contractors? We must answer this question first, and from there size our military appropriately.
RE “Pentagon awash in pink slips”. Well that’s what happens when they allowed gays into the military.
Not that I have anything against pink slips. Or gays. It was just that the headline offered an opening I couldn’t resist going through.
“Going Where No Man Has Gone Before” as any Trekkie would do.
Since its post WWII peak, DoD Civilian Employment has declined 42%, while Active Duty Uniformed Employment has declined 59%. One is unionized, the other is not.
Social Security is not an Entitlement. It is a paid-into system. It is just that not enough people are working today to keep it solvent in the future.
It is law and until it is changed, we are stuck with it, but I also can eat because of it though I’m still working at 68, but only parttime because there isn’t enough money to fund me fulltime.
As pointed out too many times, there is more money being spent instead of less money being spent. In other words, this is NOT a cut. In fact, even after this reduction in the increase, there is STILL more money being spent.
What should departments do?
1. Honor any announced pay raises, since they are only 1%, and then
2. Freeze spending at last year’s level. Voila! Everything is fine, and there is no crisis.
Someone should ask, why are you cutting jobs when you could be freezing all non-pay spending?
Actually, it is a very small percentage. Part of the reason for the substantial increase in the civilian percentage of DoD employment end strength is the change of many non-deployable positions from Uniformed Active Duty to Civilian.
Yes, more DoD Civilians and Contractors deploy than used to, but the increase in DoD Civilian deployment percentage is much lower than the increase in DoD Uniformed Active Duty and Uniformed Reserve deployment percentage.
On my phone, so I will comment in full later. I suspect the plan is to loose the defense vote and shoot for the 47% entitlement vote. You can’t have social security and a strong defense, there isn’t enough money. Trouble is there isn’t enough money for that either.
Or the more cynical view is that the GOP e is more afraid of the military than the seniors.
On my phone, so I will comment in full later. I suspect the plan is to loose the defense vote and shoot for the 47% entitlement vote. You can’t have social security and a strong defense, there isn’t enough money. Trouble is there isn’t enough money for that either.
Or the more cynical view is that the GOP e is more afraid of the military than the seniors.
No worries. I served 21 years myself in the military, and what I am witnessing transpire today both shocks and horrifies me.
I think there are two factors at work here - ignorance of the real facts compounded by personal fear.
Many Freepers might be Conservatives, but that is a very broad term. Some are evangelical Christians, some are really Libertarians, some are fiscal Conservatives, some care about social issues, some are pro-Defense, and some are a combination.
The bottom line for many is they know spending is out of control, but they don't care, as long as "something" is done. Even if it guts Defense. Let me tell you something, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the House and Senate Armed Services Committees last week that this was going to be devastating to the US military, they were not joking.
Congress knows that 2/3rds of the budget is mandatory, and the Democrats and Obama will walk over broken glass before they see the "takers" accept less - even that is a minimal sacrifice.
So they went after the 1/3rd of discretionary spending, put the greatest burden on Defense, exempted military pay and much of the procurement funds cannot be touched this far into the fiscal year - so Operations and Maintenance will be gutted. Literally.
80% of our Brigade Combat Teams will not be trained for combat. Ships will be taken out of service (it may take 10 months to get some of them back in commission IF there is future money!) Research and Development will be a shadow of what it was. TRICARE for military, veterans, and their families will be in big, big trouble financially.
When I was on active duty and overseas, I had a eye injury while on duty (I was a pilot). I nearly lost sight in one eye. The medical staff that took care of me were DoD civilian nurses and doctors.
These are the kinds of people who will be furloughed - and it makes me sick.
What kind of society have we become where the Food Stamp crowd has all they need and more, and Americans who serve and sacrifice are left out in the cold?
For many here, their own fears rule the roost. They are unemployed or under employed. They fear their Social Security or other entitlements will be affected if Sequestration is avoided, so they join the cheers to keep the cuts in place. Or, they have been hurt financially, and they want to see others hurt. For many others, I think they are just plain sick and tired of getting raped on taxes and see any cuts (even bad ones) as welcome news.
I don't know if we are in the last days or not, but these words from Christ ring true to me for today:
"Sin will be rampant everywhere, and the love of many will grow cold."
Matthew 24:12
We are a sick, evil society. This is not Ronald Reagan's American anymore. He would NEVER have allowed this to happen to the military. Our current crop of Republican leaders will.
You do realize that Byron’s message is that the sequester is NOT bad, and he doesn’t understand why Boehner is saying it WOULD BE.
In other words, Boehner agrees with your position, and Byron is calling that position nuts.
But nice of you to provide his article here.
True, while they are there. They do come back though. And their “peers” in the other agencies are not hurting at all.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.