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."

Comments

Monthly dance

[Anonymous Coward]

You know they will somehow extend this hard deadline, just like the last.. three times? I lost count.

Re:Monthly dance

[hsmith]

How terrible - we go back to spending levels of 2011! It was like we were a third world then!

Re:Monthly dance

[halltk1983]

Well, kids, unless Dad and I can get another credit card I think we might have to cut back on your toy purchases, cause God knows we're not cutting back on cigarettes or McDonalds! It's all those damn credit card companies fault you're not getting birthday presents, and definitely not our budgeting ability!

Re:Monthly dance

[Anonymous Coward]

Weak metaphor, mostly because the US has no issue raising money, alas our rates are at record lows. Additionally, comparing government finances to personal finances is completely assinine and shows incredible ignorance on the subject.

Re:Monthly dance

[femtobyte]

Oh? First, there is generally a 2-3 year delay between inflationary influences and the start of inflation actually hitting the market. So most of it won't have hit the market yet anyway. But some. Have you checked your grocery bill lately? I don't know about yours, but mine has been up somewhere around 50% over just the last couple of years. And short-term commodities like that are usually the first to see a major hit.

My grocery bill has been more stable; your personal anecdotes (and mine) may not be indicative of overall economic trends. Maybe inflation is about to go through the roof? Nonetheless, folks with billions to invest are still volunteering to buy long-term treasury bonds at worse interest than my checking account. Not that billionaire investors can't be terribly wrong.

If inflation isn't significantly above the government-claimed "approximately 2%", why do they want to raise the minimum wage 24%? Just an arbitrary figure in a misguided attempt to "legislate prosperity"? Or an attempt to cover actual costs of living the government lied about? Either one is bad news.

Maybe because the minimum wage is down by more than 50% from when it was introduced many decades ago? You realize that proposed 24% increases aren't just covering for one year of stagnant wages?

Investors always have been "pretty sure". They were sure of that in 1929... that's why the markets were at an all-time high, just before the big crash. They were just as sure in 1999-2000. And they were just as sure in 2007-2008. Look at the YouTube clips from both periods, of people saying "Come on in! The economy has never been better! The market has never been higher!"

And investors holding government bonds during the recent crash did quite well. Investments based on the private sector tanked, but no one lost a cent on Treasury bonds. The private sector is notoriously unstable; the US government has historically managed to produce a rather stable currency with well-defined slow inflation, which is why investors are eager to buy (at interest rates that lose to inflation) in economically unstable times.

Same old same old

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Same old same old

[JWW]

Bullshit. Private companies, when faced with budget shortfalls, make across the board budget cuts all the time. It's a very common tactic.

This fear mongering is making me sick. $80 billion in cuts is going to "cripple" our $3.4 Trillion government? They are they lying their asses off.

Re:Same old same old

[john.r.strohm]

From a David Casey online newsletter, courtesy of a friend's blog:

Lesson #1

US Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New debt: $1,650,000,000,000
National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent budget cuts: $38,500,000,000

Let’s now remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:

* Annual family income: $21,700
* Money the family spent: $38,200
* New debt on the credit card: $16,500
* Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
* Total budget cuts so far: $385

Re:Same old same old

[Celarent Darii]

The analogy is interesting, but it fails in one crucial aspect. A family doesn't really own the money that they spend - their resources are necessarily limited as they do not own the source of the means of exchange (namely the money). If a family was to operate like the government does, it wouldn't last very long.

However, by definition, a government is there to regulate the means of exchange, and thus is not limited to a budget in the same sense as a family is. The government can print money for instance, or regulate its worth by modifying the exchange rate with other economies, or even mandating fixed pricing on certain goods like gasoline. The government doesn't pay bills in the same way that a family does. So the question of a budget is not applicable in the same sense as for a family.

So it might be an interesting analogy, but fails at the most crucial point - a government is responsible for the value of the currency, a family merely uses the currency of the government.

the bizarre part to this

[khallow]

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.

Re:the bizarre part to this

[Rockoon]

But do you really want congress to micromanage cuts? Think about that for a bit.

The way this is working out, the secretaries and/or chiefs of each major department are going to make the choice of what is going to get cut within their department and thats surely better than having congress micromanage the cuts. The only time this isnt the case is with earmarked spending, and fuck most of that spending anyways.

This is the only way cuts should be done, and cuts are much needed pretty much everywhere. Every department aside from NASA has ballooned out of control, and even in NASA's case some of the spending is highly dubious ($8 billion on the Webb telescope? Some serious, possibly criminal, inefficiency is happening here.)

I think we would all like to see the DoD budget cut a lot more, but than in no way means that the DoE, DoA, DHS, FDA, .. and so forth should not also see major cuts.

Re:the bizarre part to this

[JaredOfEuropa]

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).

Re:the bizarre part to this

[fearofcarpet]

Maybe cutting welfare for scientists isn't the best choice for first round budget trimming, but that budget does have to go down at some point.

Welfare? Are you high? Investments in research consistently yield the highest returns of any form of investment because they generate the technology and IP that drives the entire modern economy, including keeping people healthy and living longer. Why do you think the DoD invests so much in research? It's because it produces technology that directly benefits every aspect of the military. Besides, welfare implies a handout in place of money that would otherwise be earned; i) scientists don't pocket that money, they use it to hire people (i.e., to "create jobs") and to purchase necessary equipment/infrastructure--it is definition of stimulative and ii) where else are you supposed to get $1 million to do fundamental research? Private companies and philanthropic organizations (and Defense) fund specific research goals that are near to technological application, not the zillions of person-hours of basic research on which they were built.

If there is anything that a sane, rational government should spend money on, it is scientific research. And this isn't "the first round" of cuts for science, which have been under assault by Congress for years, but flies under the radar because ordinary people can't be bothered to see the connection between the plummeting quality and quantity of STEM in the US and research funding.

Not to mention that the entire annual budget for the NSF is ~$8 billion, which is about how much money was just up and lost, in cash, in Iraq. The Pentagon probably blows $8 billion on toilet paper in a year.

Re:the bizarre part to this

[medcalf]

It's called the Washington Monument defense, after the Interior Department's scheme to avoid being cut back in the Reagan administration. Reagan proposed cutting something like 5 or 10% of the Interior Department's budget, and getting rid of a lot of the small parcels of parkland that no one visits and that have no unique ecology or real value. The US government owns something like 25% of the land area of the US directly, and Reagan's idea was to get rid of a lot of the bits that didn't actually have value. Because the smart thing to do is to let the bureaucrats who know the ins and outs of all of this land pick what would go, Reagan deferred to the bureaucrats at Interior for a list of lands to sell off or give away. For example, there is a "park" that consists of something like 350 square feet of land, between two private parcels of land, in the middle of the Nevada desert, that the government owns because of a surveying error when the land was originally titled. This "park" has to be inspected regularly (required by law and policy), and there are maintenance costs (because of access right of ways, if I'm remembering correctly). There is zero value to the government in owning this, so naturally it should be on a list of land to be gotten rid of, right? Nope. The top of the list of things to close if these budget cuts went into effect was the Washington Monument.

Keep that in mind when the Air Force says 2/3 of its aircraft would be grounded in months. Note that they don't mention laying off the valets who serve the general officers, or closing golf courses for senior officers, or getting rid of some of the fleet of executive jets that the Air Force maintains. It's called a "gold watch" in the military, but it's basically identical to the Washington Monument defense.

Re:Chaos

[Sooner Boomer]

Shame it's not tied into Politicians' pay,

Actually, their pay (Congress/Senate) is supposed to be withheld until the sequestration ends.
If this is the end of the civilized world, as some are fearmongering it, why was Obama out on a golf vacation instead of working on the budget? Does this show how seriously he takes it? Sequestration was his idea after all.

Re:Chaos

[nospam007]

"expect fewer inspections to the food supply..."

Over here in Europe we have tons of Horse-Lasagne that we can finally drop off then.

It's a scam.

[Beer_Smurf]

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.

TSA/HL

[Loki_666]

So when do they disband the TSA and Fatherland^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Homeland security?

How were all these things paid for?

[EmagGeek]

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

Re:How were all these things paid for?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now be intellectually honest and admit a bunch of that money increase is simply that black spending is now not removed from the books like it was in Bush' time. Once you add black spending in, the amount spent as a % of GDP has been dropping.

Re:How were all these things paid for?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Dude, we're borrowing almost 2x the entire defense department.

We are borrowing 90% of an entire aircraft carrier, $4 billion, per day.

You could cancel the entire DOD, and tax 100% of the income of the rich, and you would still be $100 billion a year short.

Re:Chaos

[Big Hairy Ian]

Nah we've been doing that for years we just changed the name to Taco Bell :)

Not $85 billion

[blogagog]

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.

Phony spending cut, phony panic

[Freddybear]

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.

Re:Chaos

[pedestrian crossing]

Actually, their pay (Congress/Senate) is supposed to be withheld until the sequestration ends.

Unlike the rest of federal employees who won't get their pay back after sequestration ends, congressmen/senators will.

If this is the end of the civilized world, as some are fearmongering it, why was Obama out on a golf vacation instead of working on the budget?

It is the legislative branch who has failed to act, not the executive.

Does this show how seriously he takes it? Sequestration was his idea after all.

Though Obama proposed the idea, 174 House Republicans, a majority of the majority, joined 95 Democrats to pass the plan. So Republicans arguably own the sequester as much as Obama, if not more so, since Obama never wanted to link spending cuts to the debt ceiling.