PRO AND CON
Should the across-the-board sequester budget cuts continue?
PRO
“Sequestration is better than sliced bread. It’s the only thing that has prevented the government from growing larger over the past two years.”
— Tom Schatz of Citizens Against Government Waste on Fox News
CON
“We might as well shut down the Pentagon. You’d better hope we never have a war again.”
— House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif.
It’s not just longstanding battles over taxes and curbing mandatory spending that are obstacles to a year-end pact on the budget. Another problem is a perception among some lawmakers that the automatic spending cuts known as sequestration haven’t been as harsh as advertised.
Indeed, the first year of the automatic cuts didn’t live up to the dire predictions by the Obama administration and others who warned of sweeping furloughs and disruptions of government services.
But the second round is going to be a lot worse, lawmakers and experts involved in the budget process say. One reason is that federal agencies emptied the change jar and searched beneath the sofa cushions for money to allow them to get through the automatic cuts relatively unscathed.
Most of that money, however, was spent in the 2013 budget year that ended on Sept. 30. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., said agency budget chiefs “squeezed everything to get through the first year thinking we would come to our senses.”
But those were mostly one-time accounting manuevers. Finding replacement cuts is the priority of budget talks scheduled to resume this week, and with each side vying for leverage over the other, there is little optimism that a solution can be found.
Democrats are hoping that $20 billion in new Pentagon cuts below levels imposed by sequestration will force Republicans to yield. Republicans say far more of their members are willing to keep the cuts, which appears to have added to the resolve of GOP negotiators — and they’re counting on equivalent cuts to social programs to force the Democrats’ hand.
For the time being, Congress has frozen 2014 spending at 2013 sequestration levels while the negotiators, led by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., seek a deal. Absent an agreement, the spending “caps” on agency operating budgets will shrink by another $20 billion or so.
Nowhere will the effects be felt more than at the Justice Department.
“Justice had like half a billion dollars in unobligated balances and so they brought that back and that made it possible for them not to have any furloughs anywhere in the Justice Department, Bureau of Prisons or FBI or whatever,” said Scott Lilly, a former top House Appropriations Committee aide. “But they’ve used that up so they’re going to get hit much harder this year than they did last year.”
The FBI already has suspended training of new agents and has instituted a hiring freeze.
“Quantico is quiet. I have no new agent classes going through there,” new FBI Director James Comey said last month. “I can’t afford it.”
Without relief from Congress, Comey said the automatic spending cuts will require him to eliminate 3,000 positions. The FBI’s 36,000 employees are facing unpaid furloughs of two weeks.
The situation will also worsen at the Pentagon, where the first round eroded combat readiness and grounded Air Force squadrons. Because of $4 billion in prior-year funding, the Pentagon was able to maintain Navy and Air Force procurement in 2013. Without that money in 2014, the Pentagon will have to the delay the delivery of a new aircraft carrier and a nuclear submarine.
“We are consuming tomorrow’s ‘seed corn’ to feed today’s requirements,” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“We might as well shut down the Pentagon,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif. “You’d better hope we never have a war again.”
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