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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.
Sheer bloody idiots. They couldn't get their act together to get sensible budgets, so now we end up with this. Shame it's not tied into Politicians' pay, but they're probably getting their cuts of the pie from the people who will benefit from all this.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
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's worth noting that all this discomfort only results in a drop of $85 billion. In part, that is because mandatory spending, which is something like 60% of the budget, isn't affected.
Still, looking at the list, there's a number of worthy budget cuts, such as the oversized federal law enforcement, small business loans, and various "government service" rent seeking. And one really has a hard time arguing against a 13% cut back in defense spending.
As I see it, the problem with sequestering isn't that it cuts government services, but that by its nature it can't target less effective spending or any mandatory spending at all.
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.
So when do they disband the TSA and Fatherland^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Homeland security?
Just a few years ago, the budget was 2/3 of what it is now, so how were food inspections paid for then?
Most people don't realize that this big deficit spending problem started when the $787B "one time stimulus" became part of the baseline budget and was re-spent (and then some) year after year after year on the biggest government expansion ever seen on this Earth. That $787B is STILL being spent over and over again.
Bond Bubble Ben is still printing Bernanke Bucks at a rate of about $1T/year as well, because the FED is the only entity willing to buy new US debt anymore.
When are Americans going to wake up and realize that you can't spend money you don't have on things you neither want nor need and expect to come out ahead at the end of the day?
I guess "as long as I'm getting mine" is the new American Dream.
Here are some gross, as in disgusting, numbers for US Government Spending:
2006: 2655.1B
2007: 2728.7B
2008: 2982.5B
2009: 3517.7B
2010: 3456.2B
2011: 3598.1B
2001: 1862.8B
If you take the 2001 spending figure and adjust it for inflation, it is 2411B, so in 2011 dollars we're spending 1186B more than we were in 2001.
1.2T in government growth, people. That's 49%. And that's just government growth at the federal level. Government is taking fully 50% more money from us (and our kids, and their kids, and probably also their kids after that) than they were 10 years ago.
Sources:
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/HistoricalBudgetData.xls
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt
Yeah, just another Goth article about cutting.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
The automatic sequestration will only remove $44 billion from this year's budget. Bigger cuts will occur in later years. But you should know that the government will still spend more this year than last, despite the sequestration. It's just that the increase won't be as much. The crying of poverty is just political BS.
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.
And, even with sequestration, Washington would still be spending over TWICE as much as they did during the Clinton administration. Sequestration is means "cutting" about 4% from the planned budget. (While still spending more than last year.)
It's widely believed that Clinton-style budgets were good. If you believe that, you should ask for sequestration times fifteen, cutting the projected budget by 60% to get back to Clinton-like spending.
per the most recent CBO estimates. The total budget is $4T. Anybody who is crying tears over any part of the federal government losing a whopping 1% of its budget really needs to re-examine where they are coming from. How many individuals and families deal with far larger swings in income on a weekly basis? How many people have had to abruptly make swift changes to their personal outlays because they or another family member has lost a job? Become ill?
Worse still, are these even real cuts? Or are they just slowing the rate of increase in the growth of spending?