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 ...
88,000 people at a cost of $660.9 M? That’s around $75,000 on average. 2% of that is $1,500. Suck it up buttercup.
“Good news?” You are seriously misguided. Most DoD civilians are ex-military who work side-by-side with active military guys. Because you’re rightfully pissed at Congress, it isn’t right to take it out on people who work for a living. You’re part of the electorate that re-elected O and the idiots in congress. You’re every bit as culpable and deserving to be out on the street.
This is good news if you want military aircraft grounded, ships that can’t get underway, and military guys who can’t get services (like getting paid!!).
“I knew you had “issues.” But this is a new low for you RFEngineer. “
LOL, my only issue is that I speak the truth without “sugarcoating”. There is an overflow of whining on these sequester threads, and you are the King of Whining.
I don’t have any patience for your lying about the amounts and impact of these “cuts”.
The poster said he “NETS” $22k after taxes - that’s a lot more than many in the private sector “NET”.
I’m not attacking anyone in particular - except maybe you because you are so deceptive, but America cannot afford all these government workers. We have to fire a whole bunch of them from every corner of government.
Yet, you pretend like we don’t have a problem.
These folks whining need to hear the truth. They are going to be fired in large numbers. They have to be to save the country.
So come on, Skypilot, how about a little sense of proportion and truth. These folks should be happy with even reduced paychecks - and use the opportunity to consider new lines of work, because the Budget Reaper cometh.
While a one day a week furlough is a lot, many state and local governments have been running one day a month furloughs for the last several years. They may be have seen 40 or more furlough days so far.
A wiser course would be freezing new hiring, offer early retirements, and implement an across the board reduction in force, with the goal of reducing the overall federal workforce by %5 to 10% depending on the department.
This should be done to all federal departments, not just the DoD.
I personally believe a bigger cut produces better results, because it would force a restructuring with the termination of entire programs and offices, not just cutting each division by one or two people. This is how Jack Welch fixed GE and Lou Gerstner fixed IBM. Cutting a small percentage every year does not produce the same results, even when the total cuts are the same, because it does not force a more efficient structure.
After unnecessary divisions and programs are eliminated, the goal should be to outsource as many federal jobs to contractors as possible. Contractors are driven by the profit motive, and the profit motive would force efficiencies into the workforce which the government model simply cannot do.
Again, this should be done to all federal departments, not just the DoD.
Do this, and we could easily cut 20% out of the total federal workforce budget.
How about this:
You're a jerk.
Take care.
I second, motion approved, made it law. That was easy!
It’s different this time.
You make some very valid points. I wrote my Congressman about this. To be honest, he is a Republican and a very decent guy. I don't know if he is listening. I do know he is independently wealthy, which I don't fault him for. The Bible says: "Do not covet!" Yet, that is exactly what Americans think they should do.
I didn't know myself how bad this economy was until the last few weeks. I think people hide it well, but now I have seen things that I previously would not have believed. Perhaps people have stopped hiding it as much as they did. But I now see a lot of hurt people.
The GOP leadership is going to lose this one, and lose big. The Sequester is a disater, and they are all holding onto it like a life preserver, when in reality it is a iron weight in deep water.
Still, there is hope. Obama is not God. Far from it. God laughs at Obama (Psalm 2:4).
If we pray to God, and turn to Him, there is a solution.
Have you been involved in developing a weapon system and bring it to TC status?
This retired USMC Sgt. Major has his Stuff together.
Jimmy Carter, you are the father of the Islamic Nazi movement. You threw the Shah under the bus, welcomed the Ayatollah home, and then lacked the spine to confront the terrorists when they took our embassy and our people hostage. You're the "runner-in-chief."
Bill Clinton, you played ring around the Lewinsky while the terrorists were at war with us. You got us into a fight with them in Somalia and then you ran from it. Your weak-willed responses to the USS Cole and the First Trade Center Bombing and Our Embassy Bombings emboldened the killers. Each time you failed to respond adequately, they grew bolder, until 9/11/2001.
John Kerry, dishonesty is your most prominent attribute. You lied about American Soldiers in Vietnam ... Your military service, like your life, is more fiction than fact. You've accused our military of terrorizing women and children in Iraq. You called Iraq the wrong war, wrong place, wrong time, and the same words you used to describe Vietnam. You're a fake! You want to run from Iraq and abandon the Iraqis to murderers just as you did to the Vietnamese. Iraq, like Vietnam, is another war that you were for, before you were against it.
The late John Murtha, said our military was broken. He said we can't win militarily in Iraq. He accused United States Marines of cold-blooded murder without proof and said we should redeploy to Okinawa. Okinawa??? And the Democrats called him their military expert! Maybe he suffered a traumatic brain injury while he was off building his war hero resume? He was a sad, pitiable, corrupt, and washed up old fool, not a true Marine. He wouldn't amount to a good pimple on a real Marine's ass, a phony and a disgrace.
Dick Durbin, you accused our Soldiers at Guantanamo of being Nazis, tenders of Soviet style gulags and as bad as the regime of Pol Pot, who murdered two million of his own people after your party abandoned Southeast Asia to the Communists. Then you wanted to abandon the Iraqis to the same fate. History was not a good teacher for you, was it? Lord help us! See Dick run!
Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Carl Levine, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Russ Feingold, Pat Leahy, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, the Hollywood Leftist morons, et al, to name a few ad nauseam: Every time you stand in front of television cameras and broadcast to the Islamic Nazis that we went to war because our former President lied, that the war is wrong and our Soldiers are torturers, that we should leave Iraq, you give the Islamic butchers - the same ones that tortured and mutilated American Soldiers - cause to think that we'll run away again, and all they have to do is hang on a little longer. It is inevitable that we, the infidels, will have to defeat the Islamic jihadists. Better to do it on their turf, than later on ours after they may gain both strength and momentum.
American news media, the New York Times particularly: Each time you publish stories about national defense secrets and our intelligence gathering methods, you become one united with the sub-human pieces of camel dung that torture and mutilate the bodies of American Soldiers. You can't strike up the courage to publish cartoons, but you can help Al Qaeda destroy my country. Actually, you are more dangerous to us than Al Qaeda is. Think about that each time you face Mecca to admire your Pulitzer.
You are America's 'AXIS OF IDIOTS.' Your Collective Stupidity will destroy us. Self-serving politics and terrorist-abetting news scoops are more important to you than our national security or the lives of innocent civilians and Soldiers. It bothers you that defending ourselves gets in the way of your elitist sport of politics and your ignorant editorializing. There is as much blood on your hands as is on the hands of murdering terrorists. Don't ever doubt that. Your frolics will only serve to extend this war as they extended Vietnam. If you want our Soldiers home as you claim, knock off the crap and try supporting your country ahead of supporting your silly political aims and aiding our enemies.
Yes, I'm questioning your patriotism. Your loyalty ends with self. I'm also questioning why you're stealing air that decent Americans could be breathing. You don't deserve the protection of our men and women in uniform. You need to run away from this war, this country. Leave the war to the people who have the will to see it through and the country to people who are willing to defend it.
Our country has two enemies: Those who want to destroy us from the outside and those who attempt it from within.
Semper Fi, J. D. Pendry - Sergeant Major, USMC, Retired
THIS is the kind of guy that we need to run for political office....
As I understand it more money will still be spent than the previous year. That means you’ll get 101 pizzas instead of 110. Or there ‘bouts.
Over the last 3 months, the Social Security Administration field offices (600+ of them) reduced their hours to 27 hours a week from 32. Their base pay was not reduced, which means they received an effective hourly pay increase of about 16%.
These offices are loaded with FULL TIME employees.
Can you imagine an enterprise, striving to serve the public, that would open at 9 am and close at 3 (and noon on Wednesday) ?
NBC, CNN, ABC, and the other singers in the Obama Hallelujah Chorus will NOT be checking this out.
Maybe The Caller or Breitbart?
http://www.ssa.gov/pressoffice/pr/ss-offices-close-early.html
I’m guessing civilian contractors in Afghanistan will be exempted?
The constitutional function of defense spending as a percentage of the total budget was about 29% under Reagan. Today it's down to 14% of the total budget. Most everything else in the budget is unconstitutional spending.
Yet we have "conservatives" here (and Obama) who want to cut more defense spending.
Obama and them..
I hope we will get through this, but I am not optimistic at this point.
Hang in there. God is in control.
Granted, I know there is government waste. I see it day in and day out. I cringe inside when I see the thousands, and yes, millions and billions being wasted. I really do.
But geez louise, I finally get a decent paying job and look at what is about to happen. It's not the best job in the world, but it'll do. I work with the best group of co-workers I could ever ask for. Sure, some of them are a bit on the strange side, like me, but we laugh all day and it's fun to go into work. Yes the most of the management can't manage their way through a wet paper sack but I deal with it.
But now because we have a president in the WH who hates the military, who created this mess to begin with, who wants to take away 20% of my pay, and who is the very opposite of a Ronald Reagan or Abraham Lincoln, people want to give him a free pass at the expense of my pay check? And hey, let's also get one thing straight here, THERE IS A GOOD CHANCE WE WILL NOT BE REIMBURSED FOR OUR LOST WAGES!
All you hypocrites, who want to see real budget tightening, tell the government to stop funding organizations like Sesame Street, NPR, Planned Parenthood; tell them to stop sending money overseas to countries that hate the USA, tell them to stop taking vacations that cost the tax payer on average of $500,000!!! That’ll pay for the 22 billion dollar shortfall that is going to cost me my salary.
I would love to be President if only for the sole reason of giving the government the type of reduction in force that will put it back to doing the job it's supposed to do, defend the nation and provide for a stable currency, PERIOD! I would also love to fire idiots like Harry Reid, Olympia Snowe, Charles Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and the like. I'd repeal the amendment that enabled Senators to be elected and put their appointment back in the hands of the states. I'd fire almost every Supreme Court justice and put constitutional scholars on it and get back it back to ruling justly. Lastly, I'd repeal every law, hate or otherwise, that outlaws or impedes true Christian faith from being practiced.
I’m mad!
There is a very good chance that this will be different and that we WILL NOT RECEIVE any back pay. In addition, after the current 22 week furlough is completed, they are talking of bringing every back for 2 weeks and then DOING IT ALL OVER AGAIN FOR ALL OF FISCAL YEAR 2014. You still want to see good people out of work because the idiot in the WH?
“You’re a jerk.”
Possibly true, but I am also correct about the future prospects for those in government.
But whatever I am, I am not a liar, that is something you cannot claim.
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