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.)
Good post. No intention whatsoever on the government’s part of trying to make real sustained cuts where they make sense. Panetta’s pentagon only seeks to cause maximum pain, until they get their candy back.