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More than 650,000 civilian Defense Department workers will begin taking the first of their 11 unpaid days off next week, but the cut in salary they will see in the three months may pale compared to what officials worry could be larger-scale layoffs next year. Roughly 85 percent of the department’s nearly 900,000 civilians around the world will be furloughed, according to the latest statistics provided by the Pentagon. But while defense officials were able to shift money around to limit the furloughs this year, there are widespread worries that if automatic budget cuts go forward for 2014, thousands of...

<p>American civilian employees of the Defense Department have put up with pay freezes and are going on furloughs starting next week, but German civilian workers at U.S. military bases in Germany are getting a pay increase.</p> <p>Some U.S. lawmakers say it's unfair that the German union ver.di, which represents about 2 million workers, negotiated a pay increase in June. Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., complained about the raise for German workers in a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel dated Monday and released by her office Tuesday. She asked him to suspend the raises.</p>

I thought I’d re-up this story from the headlines. White House fear-mongerers hardest hit: Before “sequestration” took effect, the Obama administration issued specific — and alarming — predictions about what it would bring. There would be one-hour waits at airport security. Four-hour waits at border crossings. Prison guards would be furloughed for 12 days. FBI agents, up to 14. At the Pentagon, the military health program would be unable to pay its bills for service members. The mayhem would extend even into the pantries of the neediest Americans: Around the country, 600,000 low-income women and children would be denied federal...

In the last few weeks there have been widely circulated reports about law-abiding pilots being confronted by heavily armed local cops and federal Customs and Border Protection agents who appear to act as if they have absolute authority to search and interrogate pilots and passengers. "At least 12 of our members have been stopped and had their plane searched by CBP for absolutely no reason at all," said AOPA spokesman Steve Hedges. "We've asked CBP for documents related to the searches, filing a Freedom of Information Act to get it, but so far they have been unresponsive." As always, it's...

It wasn't so very long ago that the Obama administration was very loudly and pointedly agonizing over the dreadful impact that the sequestration-imposed, across-the-board budget cuts were going to have on both the economy and the federal government's ability to perform some of its basic functions — which doesn't quite explain why it is that union employees of the Internal Revenue Service are about to receive $70 million in bonuses that were supposed to have been cancelled. The apparent deal with the National Treasury Employees Union is scheduled for Wednesday and was made public by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley...

<p>A wounded soldier receives treatment at a rehabilitation center at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.</p>

Imagine an enemy that could neutralize 13 U.S. Air Force squadrons. What force could pull off such a feat? Not China, not Russia, certainly not al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Only the U.S. House of Representatives, and its weapon is sequestration. The problem traces back to 2011, when lawmakers approved a plan for across-the-board budget cuts that would kick in if a special panel couldn't reach compromises during a debt limit showdown. The cuts were intended to be so unacceptable they would force members of Congress to do their jobs, make tough choices, and work with one another. In other words,...

"Extraordinary and serious budgetary challenges" are being cited as the reason that thousands of employees at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center are being furloughed this summer, according to a letter sent to employees. The letter, which was obtained by Federal News Radio, directly blames budget cuts related to sequestration as the reason that more than 3,500 civilian workers at both Walter Reed and Fort Belvoir Community Hospital will take up to 11 unpaid days off. "The Department of Defense will need funding in other accounts that can be used to provide the warfighters with what they need to protect...

Almost 80 percent of the Senate’s proposed farm bill — a $955 billion measure — will be used to pay for food stamps in the coming decade. “The trillion-dollar farm and food stamp bill should not be called the ‘Farm Bill,” said Heritage Action for America CEO Michael Needham, to Breitbart. “Washington doesn’t want Americans to know that 80 percent of the spending in the bill goes to fund Obama’s big-government, food stamp agenda.” As for the remaining 20 percent? That goes for price supports for farmers — an “equally disturbing” federal disbursement, Mr. Needham said, in the Breitbart report....

Give Stephen Fuller credit for this much: He's willing to admit he was wrong. During the debate leading up to the federal budget sequester, Fuller was a voice of doom. An economist at George Mason University and the director of its Center for Regional Analysis, he predicted that sequestration would be especially calamitous for Washington, D.C., and its surroundings. If Congress didn't stop the automatic spending cuts from going into effect, Fuller warned last year, the Washington area was headed for a "devastating recession." Some 450,000 jobs, many of them in the private sector, would be wiped out in Virginia,...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama says the nation must do more than just remember its fallen heroes on Memorial Day. In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama says the country must care for the loved ones the fallen leave behind. He says the country must also make sure that all veterans receive the care and benefits they have earned. Obama says that, above all, the armed forces must have the support needed to carry out their missions at home and abroad

Although sequestration’s spending cuts grab headlines, the tax hikes are having greater fiscal effect. Unlike the much-mentioned March 1, sequester, the tax hikes began January 1, and are permanent. The disparate impacts and disproportional reaction have everything to do with Washington’s entitlement culture – that Washington feels entitled to tax and spend. Washington began this year by definitively breaking with its recession mindset. Until then, the ostensible focus had been on protecting the economic recovery, regardless of budgetary impact. For this reason, the Bush tax cuts, which liberals had always vehemently opposed, had been extended and a 2% payroll tax...

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is exempting around 500 civilian sexual assault prevention personnel from this year’s mandatory furloughs, a senior defense official told POLITICO, in a bid to show the Pentagon is serious about cracking down on sexual assault in the ranks. Hagel is expected to make the announcement on Wednesday. His move comes after a rash of arrests and investigations into service members accused of sexual misconduct and a summit of top military leaders at the White House last week, when President Barack Obama called the problem “dangerous to our national security.” Hagel has ordered most of the...

The United States Marine Band's 215th anniversary concert scheduled for Saturday, July 6, 2013, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has been canceled due to sequestration. This event will not be rescheduled.

With Congress increasingly unable to resolve budget disputes, federal programs on automatic pilot are consuming ever larger amounts of government resources. The trend helps older Americans, who receive the bulk of Social Security and Medicare benefits, at the expense of younger people. This generational shift draws modest public debate. But it alarms some policy advocates, who say the United States is reducing vital investments in the future. Because Democrats and Republicans can't reach a grand bargain on deficit spending — with mutually accepted spending cuts and revenue hikes — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid keep growing, largely untouched. Steady expansions...

Federal Reserve officials have mapped out a strategy for winding down an unprecedented $85 billion-a-month bond-buying program meant to spur the economy—an effort to preserve flexibility and manage highly unpredictable market expectations. Officials say they plan to reduce the amount of bonds they buy in careful and potentially halting steps, varying their purchases as their confidence about the job market and inflation evolves. The timing on when to start is still being debated. Enlarge Image image image The Fed's strategy for how and when to wind down the program is of intense interest in financial markets. While the strategy being...

With furloughs looming, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter this week paid tribute to the job done by the Pentagon's civilian work force while warning that there soon would be fewer of them doing it. In a series of appearances that fell during Public Service Recognition Week, Carter said the department had yet to come to a decision on how many furlough days to impose to meet the budget-cutting demands of the Congressional sequester process in the current fiscal year. Carter called the across-the-board sequester cuts "stupid," and said they would result in the loss of five to six percent of...

Defense Department leaders spent months warning Congress that military readiness would begin to erode if sequestration went into effect on March 1. The Navy and Marine Corps are telling lawmakers that it's now happening and that things will only get worse from here. Across government, agencies say the impact of sequestration will be somewhat insidious. But in the case of DoD's two sea services, they're already feeling it, officials told the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness. "Due to reduced training and maintenance, almost all of our non-deployed ships and aviation squadrons are soon going to be less than fully...

<p>Fate is fickle, power cyclical, and nothing is new under the sun. Especially in Washington, where after every election the losing party is sagely instructed to confess sin, rend garments, and rethink its principles lest it go the way of the Whigs. And where the victor is hailed as the new Caesar, facing an open road to domination.</p>

Once again, the Pentagon wants to scrap a weapon – in this case, the Abrams tank – that Congress has an interest in preserving. But with 'sequester' cuts, the tradeoff will be civilian furloughs. Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno testifies on Capitol Hill on April 23. The Army’s hulking Abrams tank, built to dominate the enemy in combat, is proving to be equally hard to beat in a budget battle, because of a bipartisan push to spend an extra $436 million on tanks, which the Pentagon does not want. Even as the Pentagon struggles to make some tough, congressionally...