Posted on 01/02/2024 9:02:43 PM PST by 11th_VA
Lawmakers will resume negotiations in January with daunting prospects …
… Under a provision of the debt ceiling law President Biden negotiated with House Republicans last year, an automatic 1% cut would hit agencies’ budgets on May 1 if Congress has not yet approved full-year funding. That was designed to disproportionately impact defense spending and therefore incentivize all sides to avoid the automatic reductions, as Republicans typically prioritize that side of the ledger. Due to “anomalies” included in stopgap measures, however, the Congressional Budget Office recently determined domestic agencies would shoulder the impact.
Assuming a full year of funding for non-defense agencies at the current CR level, a reversion to the May 1 cap established in the debt ceiling deal would result in a $73 billion, or 10% across-the-board, cut. Defense would actually see its spending level increase by more than $25 billion. The Office of Management and Budget has final discretion over exactly how a sequester is implemented, but may have little wiggle room.
Republicans could use the possibility of cuts to domestic priorities as leverage, knowing Democrats would be desperate to avoid such an outcome. The debt deal set top-line funding for fiscal years 2024 and 2025, but Republicans are insisting an extra $69 billion that was agreed to as part of the deal—but not put in statute—is not added to that figure as originally intended. Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., agreed to generate that money for non-defense discretionary spending by rescinding unused pandemic funds and $20 billion from funding set aside for the Internal Revenue Service as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Johnson made clear he would honor only what was written in the Fiscal Responsibility Act, not the so-called “side deals” that allowed non-defense spending to stay essentially flat in fiscal 2024…
(Excerpt) Read more at govexec.com ...
“The Fiscal Responsibility Act would force absolutely devastating, across-the-board cuts on virtually all domestic programs. That could be as much as a nearly 10% cut,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash, who chairs the appropriations panel, said recently on the Senate floor. “Let’s be clear about the damage here: immediate hiring freezes and furloughs at just about every agency.”
She added millions of low-income women and children could lose benefits, wait times at ports of entry could quadruple and 700,000 households could lose access to federal housing assistance.
SHUT IT DOWN!
And give all those gov employees a paid vacation...no...fight it out...Make Biden and SCHUMER bend
Good!
Cry me a friggin river.
Make it an UNpaid "vacation"--including for our military--and after a fortnight or two let the fragging begin.
Blue states would collapse. A while back red state governors and legislators rubber stamped digital currency.
The republicans have never done anything substantialfor us. They say build a wall and have mexico pay for it, then say there was no mechanism for that.
America is finished. Covid tyranny was the final nail i. The coffin and a republican prez held the hammer. No one would have worn a mask and restricted travel under Obama. It had to be Trump and the mushy middle.
Now they are sterilizing children in elementary school.
There is no coming back from where we are.
Furloughs. Welcome to the real world. Except for many they are permanent.
“wait times at ports of entry could quadruple”
Will the caravan be inconvenienced too? How about they let legitimate passengers just walk past Customs and Immigration with a promise to come back later and clear./s
EC
Our fearless leaders for the past 50 years have been filling a teacup (the US debt) using a firehose. It’s spilled out of the cup and has filled the room up with water. We are treading in that water inches below the ceiling with only our nose sticking out. Drowning is imminent.
Our national debt now exceeds $34 Trillion dollars and servicing that debt is our nation’s greatest expenditure. Anyone who loves this great nation must favor the 10% cut in across-the-board expenditures. And I would not exclude DOD. They are grossly fat, wasteful and involved in huge non-military programs.
Perfect, just what the doctor ordered, 10% is a good start.
Most of them are unconstitutional anyway, so that's a good thing.
I fail to see the problem ...
We need a Constitutional Amendment to prohibit Congress from paying federal employees for not working. No other group in the country gets paid when laid off or when on strike. Every other group in the country knows that fact is a condition of employment. Federal employees should know it too.
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