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How Sequestration Will Affect Federal Research Agencies
carmendrahl writes "Unless Congress and the White House act before March 1, the automatic across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester will kick in. And federal agencies are bracing for the fiscal impact. Federal agencies and the White House are releasing details about how these cuts will affect their operations. If the cuts take effect, expect fewer inspections to the food supply, cuts to programs that support cleanups at former nuclear plants, and plenty of researcher layoffs, among other things."
You know they will somehow extend this hard deadline, just like the last.. three times? I lost count.
Whenever a government department is threatened with cuts, they announce that they'll cut front-line staff and not overpaid managers or worthless paper-pushers. That's why government spending expands forever until the economy collapses.
It is a scam.
They make sure the thing people care about get cut first.
The things that really should be cut never get touched.
We all get cowed into giving them more and more money.
See how much of an automatic cut your senators pay gets.
No, wait they still get an automatic raise
Makes me crazy.
It's worth noting that all this discomfort only results in a drop of $85 billion.
As someone else said in this thread:
It is a scam.
They make sure the thing people care about get cut first.
The things that really should be cut never get touched.
We all get cowed into giving them more and more money.
See how much of an automatic cut your senators pay gets.
No, wait they still get an automatic raise
It's structured for the very purpose of making 'budget cuts' seem like a waste of time. You'll never get to the creamy center because there's so much hard, baked on crud you've got to scrape off first - like a boiled lobster which is covered in coral growth.
This is why we'll never see a de-funding of things like the IRS, anything else related to core government operations, or "governing body" luxuries. Why do we not talk about cutting money from Health and Human Services? Why do we not talk about defunding the Social Security Administration (even though the bulk of the funding to the SSA doesn't even make it to recipients of SS?) Government pensions are by far the biggest money soak - but of course, these will never be touched. God help our children and their children (due to the drastic increase in size/number of government employees in the past 4 years, there'll be a lot more people waiting in line for their pensions and fewer people to fill 'em).
There's a lot of talk about the military, but the military and all DoD related spending isn't even half what these two are combined, and we've got precious little to show for it (and seemingly less year by year, as defense spending remains historically consistently flat, but shrinking slightly (since WWII).
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The problem, as pointed out by others, is that the department heads tend to cut the wrong things, deliberately. They make sure that it's the public rather than the department itself feeling necessity's sharp pinch. The Trashmaster General will not cut redundant management layers or cancel the 70 man junket to GarbageCon'13, but will instead reduce service levels and let the trash pile up in the streets. Not because it is easier (which it is), but because it will cause a public outcry so that, with a little luck, his budget will be back to its former levels the next year.
Congress shouln't micromanage these cuts, but isn't it their job to make sure the secretaries cut the right things in the right way, and set them straight if they don't? (Not sure how that works; I am not from the US But don't worry, we're in the same boat over here).
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
They aren't really cutting spending. Spending will still increase, just not as much as they wanted. And for that we get to listen to the Ruling Class whine and moan and act all theatrical about what a terrible panic will ensue because they can't overspend as much as they want.
What a load of bullshit.
And what a load of idiots we are when we let them get away with it. Any program manager who cuts anything critical instead of his own paycheck should be fired immediatly without recourse. And any politician who plays the false panic card during the next few months should get a nice present come next primary season - a challenger who won't sit and take all the bullshit that'll get thrown around.
If by "always" you mean "whenever a Democrat is president", sure. They gave precisely zero fucks about deficit spending for the past three Republican presidents.
The "credit" is only available because the government has the ability to raise its own limits. Until the day when everyone stops buying bonds. I'm saying that we should stop needing to sell bonds before they become worthless.
The interest on government bonds is less than inflation and they still sell well, which is an indication that the market is quite far from considering them worthless.
The other thing that the low rates suggests is that lowering taxes wouldn't create a flood of private sector investments. Right now there's a metric fuckton of money tied on bonds that lose money every day and no one is in a rush to employ it more productively so there isn't a good reason to believe that tax cut money would end up funding innovation.
oh bullshit. Stop regurgitating the party line. Though, you're probably getting paid to do so.
The level of cuts are miniscule, so minor as to be meaningless. The whole story is propaganda to try and shore up Obama's numbers and lay the blame for the entirety of the failed economy on someone else. That's right, let's blame the minority in the legislature, not the leader. There's no way the tiny level of spending cuts are going to impact every single person working for the government. It's complete bullshit and you know it.