As I spent the weekend digging through the 83 page sequester report issued on Friday night by the White House, it was obvious that many readers and listeners had a lot of questions about how $85 billion in budget cuts were being administered.
And it was obvious from comments to me on Twitter (@jamiedupree) and on my blog that not everyone liked my answers.
"Are these individual department cuts "chosen" or are they predetermined?"
This is a good question because every program area basically received the same cut - 5% in domestic and 7.8% in military spending.
But there were some programs that were spared - like veterans benefits, the VA and pay for soldiers, food stamps and a few more - while most everything else got a budget haircut.
"@jamiedupree I noticed in all your tweets about cuts; no one in Congress took a pay cut. Why?"
First, the sequester could not cut the pay of lawmakers in Congress, because it would be unconstitutional. And whose fault is that? You can blame Speaker John Boehner.
Back when Boehner came to Congress after winning his seat in 1990, he was part of a group of aggressive freshmen Republican lawmakers who were looking to make reforms in Congress.
One of their projects was to breathe life into a Constitutional Amendment that had been proposed by James Madison in 1789, but was never ratified by enough states.
The text is simple: "No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened."
The idea was to stop the Congress from raising its own pay; any pay raises would have to wait until after the next election.
Boehner and other Republicans got the last few state legislatures to approve that amendment - and because of that - the sequester cannot cut the pay of members of Congress, though that isn't stopping some Democrats, who last week unveiled a bill to dock the pay of lawmakers just like if they were furloughed.
"Huh? RT @jamiedupree: $3 million was cut from the Milk Market Orders Assessment Fund."
Yes, there are all kinds of cuts from the sequester in departments and agencies that many people have probably never heard about before.
Gallaudet University lost $6 million in the sequester cuts. If you don't live in Washington, or you don't know someone who is deaf, you probably wouldn't recognize the Gallaudet name.
$2 million was cut from the Rural Electrification and Telecommunications Loans Program Account at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
There was NOAA losing $1 million for the Limited Access System Administration Fund and $1 million from the "Standard Setting Body" at the Department of Commerce.
Those were some of the "no-name" cuts in the budget. But there were also a lot of higher profile cutbacks, like $20 million in salaries and expenses for the U.S. Senate, $62 million for salaries and expenses in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Federal Aviation Administration lost $232 million to the sequester. The State Department lost $665 million for its foreign diplomatic and consular programs.
The IRS lost $114 million for taxpayer services, $267 million for enforcement and 199 million for operations support.
The Army Corps of Engineers lost $250 million for construction.
And the list goes on and on.
I counted 922 different line items that were cut - who knows if my eyes blurred over at some point and caused me to miss one or two.
You can see the 83 page sequester report for yourself on the White House web site.
"How could these be cuts from this year's budget? They have not passed a budget in the last four years!"
Sigh. Here we go again.
As I have explained many times in this blog, the Congress has not approved a "budget resolution" since 2009. That is the non-binding document that sets the framework for the budget.
The budget resolution has no force of law. It is not signed by the President. Just because a budget resolution is approved or not approved does not matter - it is not a law. It is non-binding. It does not spend money. It just sets the outline for the year's budget, which does not have to balance.
But Republicans have done a very good job making it sound like the lack of a budget resolution has caused budget trouble.
It is important to realize that even when a budget resolution is not approved by Congress, the Congress can still vote on budget bills to spend money. That is what has happened since 2009. It happened back in 2006 when the Republicans ran the House and Senate, and the Congress did not approve a final budget resolution - but money was still spent.
In recent years, Congress has sometimes approved the funding bills for the budget as part of a large year-end package, sometimes as a temporary budget like the one we are operating under right now, which runs out March 27.
The current budget is an extension of the Fiscal Year 2012 budget, which was approved by lawmakers in December of 2011 - you can read that document here.
And no matter how many times I explain that situation, someone will tell me today that there is no budget, like this one:
"This is technically not a budget as defined by law," one reader said, not realizing that it is exactly what the Congress passes each year to fund the government.
Sigh.
Time for another question.
"You keep calling sequester details 'cuts' but it is my understanding they are not."
Yes, these are cuts.
They are actual cuts in the discretionary budget, which funds everything outside of Medicare, Social Security and other mandatory programs.
The discretionary budget is what the Congress votes on every year, just like what I cited above. When you hear about the budget deficit, that is from the discretionary side of the budget, which represents less than 30 percent of what Uncle Sam spends. (Technically everything else is referred to as being "off-budget," as Medicare and Social Security are funded by their own trust funds.)
The discretionary budget in 2012 was $1.043 trillion; for the current 2013 budget year, it was originally at $1.047 trillion, but with the sequester, it is now closer to $974 billion.
I may not have been that good in math, but even I can figure out that going from $1.043 or $1.047 trillion down to $974 billion is a cut.
Yes, it is a cut. And yes, it is a cut from the current budget, not spread out over ten years - and it is not a reduction in the level of increase.
But I know a lot of people won't believe that either.
"What about cuts of staffers in Congress?"
Earlier, we discussed how the pay of lawmakers in the Congress could not be cut, but the money that goes to salary and expenses for members of Congress was chopped by 5%, just like all other domestic spending programs.
While no administrative staffers working directly for the House and Senate will be subject to layoffs, furloughs or pay cuts, that may not be true for some of those working for individual lawmakers in Congress.
In other words, if you weren't careful about your office budget, you might well have to give pay cuts or furlough days - or even layoffs to make sure your office budget doesn't run out.
I would bet there will be some lawmakers and/or committees who didn't plan enough for the sequester - but we'll see about that in coming weeks.
"What happens next?"
This week the House will move a bill that would extend the current stop-gap budget for the federal government and also tinker with the sequester. Hopefully I'll get my hands on those details very soon.
And that will bring more questions.
