A new report from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) paints a grim picture for tens of thousands of workers at federal agencies facing more than $1.2 TRILLION in impending sequestration cuts set to take effect on January 1, 2013.
The massive report, issued as required by the recently-approved Sequestration Transparency Act of 2012, contains the most detail yet on just how far-reaching the reductions will be in the absence of compromise legislation.
In August 2011, bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate voted for the threat of sequestration as a mechanism to force Congress to act on further deficit reduction. The specter of harmful across-the-board cuts to defense and non-defense programs was intended to drive both sides to compromise. The sequestration itself was never intended to be implemented.
The numbers tell the whole story: non-exempt discretionary defense programs will be cut by 9.4 percent while non-exempt non-defense discretionary programs (all other agencies) will see cuts of 8.2 percent. These cuts could cost small business nearly one million jobs.
“The results of these cuts would be exactly as the Administration described: devastating,” said NFFE/IAM National President William R. Dougan. “Lower agency budgets means fewer resources to hire new employees and maintain existing ones; it means fewer and lower quality services for the taxpayer; it means fewer resources flowing to communities across America who rely on federal jobs as key contributors to their economies. Sequestration is a lose-lose in every way imaginable.”
