As the Congress stumbles its way out of town this week to go home early for election campaign work, government employee unions say the $110 billion in automatic budget cuts that will take effect in January would require widespread furloughs and layoffs of federal government workers.
"If these cuts move forward, there will be a devastating impact on the federal government with federal agencies forced to either furlough or lay off thousands of workers, threatening the safety and security of the public,” said Colleen M. Kelley, head of the National Treasury Employees Union.
"These cuts would mean hiring freezes, furloughs and staffing reductions at the Border Patrol, Bureau of Prisons, Transportation Security Administration and other agencies that keep America safe," said J. David Cox, head of the American Federal of Government Employees.
Last Friday's "sequester" report from the White House said most domestic programs would be cut 8.2%, with defense accounts being trimmed by 9.4% to start the New Year.
Unless the Congress acts to stave off those cuts or prioritize how the cuts would take place, then this would all be pretty simple - if you work for a federal agency, your budget will be reduced in early January of 2013.
For example, pick a department - any department - let's say Energy.
The Energy Information Administration would see a cut of 8.2%, so too would the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program Account and more.
Next, let's run over to the Department of Interior, where the Office of Inspector General, the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation, the U.S. Geological Survey and more would lose 8.2% of their budgets.
The same would happen over at the Commerce Department, which houses the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center.
This is not a judgment on whether the automatic cuts would be "good" or "bad" at these agencies - just a reminder that it would occur in an across the board manner, not in some legislative effort to prioritize what should be funded and what should not get taxpayer dollars.
The House has already passed several plans to prevent the $55 billion in defense cuts, but has not acted on the other $55 billion in domestic spending reductions.
The Senate has not voted on any measure to postpone any or all of those automatic cuts, which were approved as part of last year's debt limit deal.
It was thought that the idea of automatic cuts would be so politically unpalatable, that the Congress would never let those cuts occur.
Well, we are just about three and a half months away from that happening, with absolutely no consensus among lawmakers on what to do.
Some might argue that the Congress should stay in session and work on that - and many more items of unfinished business - but at this point, the House and Senate should be gone for the elections by Friday at the latest.
