The Pentagon notified Congress yesterday that it will furlough most of its civilian employees starting in April if “sequestration” budget cuts kick in March 1. The notice, though, had no obvious impact on the congressional gridlock over stopping the cuts, and the Pentagon said there’s little Congress could do in the coming months to make those reductions more manageable.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta sent letters to congressional leaders yesterday giving them the legally required 45-day notice about the potential furloughs, which would result in 22 days of unpaid leave from late April until fiscal year 2013 ends on Sept. 30. Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale told reporters roughly 750,000 civilians would be forced to take the forced time off, yielding up to $5 billion in savings.
Sequestration–$500 billion in decade-long reductions to planned defense spending–would force the Pentagon to cut $46 billion from March through September.
“We feel we don’t have any choice but to impose furloughs, even though we would much prefer not to do it,” Hale said yesterday at the Pentagon. “We’re more than 20 percent short in (operations and maintenance funding) O&M, with seven months to go, much higher in some of the services, particularly the Army. Civilian personnel make up a substantial part of (Department of Defense) DOD O&M funding.”
He said to the Pentagon can’t make reductions in the military force at this point in the year.
“They’d cost us money in this year because of unused leave and severance pay, so furloughs are really the only way we have to quickly cut civilian personnel funding,” he said.
The White House and many Democrats and Republicans in Congress oppose sequestration, which would trim more than $1 trillion in spending over a decade when cuts to non-defense spending is factored in. Yet the parties are at an impasse, and lawmakers are back in their districts now for a week-long recess.
While some lawmakers have weighed changing the law so the Pentagon could have more flexibility in managing the cuts, Hale said he does not favor such a plan.
Such flexibility would, in theory, allow the Pentagon to prioritize where the $46 billion reduction would be made in the next seven month. Sequestration is designed to cut a set percentage–13 percent in FY ’13–off of most Pentagon programs and activities.
“We’re five months into the fiscal year, facing a $46 billion cut,” Hale said. “Even if you said you can do it wherever you want, we would have to go after just about every dollar that isn’t obligated in order to get those cuts that quickly.”
“I know that there have been suggestions that, well, we can just, quote, solve this problem by giving flexibility,” he added. “I don’t think it would help that much this far into the fiscal year. And if it makes sequestration more likely to either occur or persist, I think it’s a bad deal, the flexibility.”
Hale said the Pentagon can reprogram monies within its coffers. Yet the process involved is not simple, and requires the Pentagon to garner unanimous support for each money shift from the four congressional defense committees.
“I’ve had four years of experience with reprogramming, and I think that…it’s not realistic that we could move multiple billions,” he said, adding there are “legal limits on our transfer authority.”
“Could some of this change?” he said. “Yes….Congress can change the laws in ways that would make this easier.”
Hale also told reporters he doesn’t expect “many, if any” weapon-system contracts to be terminated because of sequestration, noting the “substantial” termination costs the Pentagon would incur.
“So it’s more…that we will not pick up options, that we may not start or delay starting new contracts, but I wouldn’t expect that we will terminate existing contracts,” he said.
Pentagon officials have been telling concerned lawmakers that sequestration cuts would not apply to obligated Pentagon funding that contractors already have. Yet they have said sequestration could compel them to try to renegotiate existing contracts.
Hale said yesterday that he wanted to ensure companies: “If you’ve got a contract with us, we’re going to pay you.”
GOP leaders in Congress appear ready to allow sequestration to kick in as they seek leverage in the deficit-cutting debate.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) responded to Panetta’s furlough warning yesterday by reiterating his own standard argument, which includes blaming President Barack Obama for sequestration.
“I agree with the secretary of defense that the impact of the president’s sequester would be devastating to our military,” Boehner said. “That’s why the House has acted twice to replace the president’s sequester with common-sense cuts and reforms that protect our national security, and it’s why I’ve been calling on the president for more than a year to press his Democratic-controlled Senate to do the same.”
Obama has been calling for Congress to stop sequestration at recent events, including his State of the Union Address last week, through steps including revenue-generating tax reforms.
The Senate plans to debate a Democratic plan next week–before March 1 hits on Friday–to stop the first calendar year of sequestration cuts in part through new taxes, which Republicans insist they will not accept. The GOP-run House previously approved plans, which Boehner cited, to stop sequestration with different cuts to domestic programs that Democrats want to protect. And House and Senate Armed Services Committee Republicans have proposed a plan that has gone nowhere to offset the first year of sequestration through reductions to the federal workforce.