washington scene LEGISLATIVE NEWS THAT AFFECTS YOU
Failure Fee?
Virtually all agreed imposing a $46 billion across-the-board defense budget cut between now and October is dumb and would hurt readiness — but that’s just what politicians allowed to happen.
As this magazine went to press, Congress had failed to stave off the devastating, across-the-board cuts of sequestration. Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and the Joint Chiefs warned the House and Senate Armed Services committees that military readiness would take a huge hit if sequestration-driven budget cuts took effect.
With time running out before the cuts kicked in March 1, Carter said, “The wolves are at the door.”
His warning came on the heels of testimony by then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta that DoD faces the “greatest national security readiness crisis in more than a decade.”
The service chiefs said the cuts will force deployment cancellations; reductions in flying and steaming hours; curtailment of maintenance, training, and travel; and a furlough of 700,000 DoD civilian employees one day a week without pay for the rest of the fiscal year.
“We need to find $46 billion for sequestration between now and the end of the [fiscal] year,” Carter stated. “Furloughs only get $5 billion … we still have $41 [billion] to go.”
Sequestration once again has turned out to be something elected officials hide behind as an excuse for refusing to do their jobs.
President Barack Obama has exempted military pay from sequestration for 2013, but Carter said the troops will be hit in other ways, including longer hours to do the work of furloughed civilians, cutbacks on TRICARE access late in the year, and reductions in family support programs. In 2014, 100,000 extra troops will have to be cut unless Congress takes alternative action.
“I began my career in a hollow Army,” said Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno. “I do not want to end my career in a hollow Army.”
Many committee lawmakers expressed hope the Joint Chiefs’ testimony would help force a bipartisan compromise deal. But with sequestration imminent and not a glimmer of any deal in sight, it became clear the cuts would not be avoided or eased.
It’s beyond disappointing to MOAA that Congress refused to change the sequestration law, which most people in both chambers and both parties acknowledged would impose dumb, massive cuts in ways that would harm military readiness.
Sequestration — blind, across-the-board meat-ax cuts to nearly every bud-get category — once again has turned out to be something elected officials hide behind as an excuse for refusing to do their jobs. Instead of making the best of a bad budget situation, they’ve chosen to make the worst of it and put their partisan objectives ahead of our national interests.
Sequester Update* The March 1 deadline for preventing the sequester-driven $46 billion cut in the current year’s defense budget passed without legislative action to stop it. So the president signed an executive order implementing the cuts.
*online: For the latest information on sequestration, go to
www.moaa.org/sequestration.
APRIL 2013 MILITARY OFFICER 31
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