The Pentagon warned 800,000 civilian employees worldwide Wednesday that they will be forced to take unpaid leave if deep budget cuts take effect next week, fueling growing anxiety about the impact of the automatic spending reductions on the nation’s economy and security.
In the most detailed account of the ramifications of across-the-board cuts, called the sequester, Defense Department officials said civilian personnel could be put on leave one day a week for 22 weeks — effectively cutting their pay by 20 percent for nearly six months. According to the Office of Personnel Management, 107,000 of these workers live in the District, Maryland and Virginia.
You’ve heard the word “sequester” mentioned by politicians a lot lately. The Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe explains what the term means, and why it matters.
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The nation’s two senior national security officials, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Secretary of State John F. Kerry, said Wednesday that the reductions would hurt the nation’s global standing.
“There is no mistaking that the rigid nature of the cuts forced upon this department, and their scale, will result in a serious erosion of readiness across the force,” Panetta told employees in a memo.
The Pentagon announcement sparked fresh partisan sniping, with Republicans insisting that it is President Obama’s responsibility to prevent the defense cuts from taking effect.
“As the commander-in-chief, President Obama is ultimately responsible for our military readiness, so it’s fair to ask: what is he doing to stop his sequester that would ‘hollow out’ our Armed Forces?” House Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio) said in a statement.
Obama, on the other hand, continued his efforts to pressure GOP lawmakers to embrace his proposed fix for the sequester, sitting for eight interviews with handpicked television stations in states that would be hit hard by reductions.
“There’s a better way to do it than this,” Obama told Boston’s WCVB, an ABC affiliate. “But the key is for [Republicans] to go ahead to put forward a balanced, responsible approach that will avoid cuts to things like Head Start programs, medical programs, help for the mentally ill, all these things that have an impact on people’s day-to-day lives.”
The interviews were part of an intensifying push by the president to persuade lawmakers to pass a short-term measure delaying the start of the sequester, which cuts $85 billion in federal spending this year and $1.2 trillion over the next decade.
A report this week by economists at Wells Fargo Securities said Maryland, Virginia and the District — in addition to Hawaii and Alaska — are the places that are likely to be most hurt by the sequester. Federal spending represents about 20 percent of economic activity in those three local jurisdictions — higher than anywhere else in the country, the economists said.
Defense Comptroller Robert F. Hale told reporters Wednesday that $1.1 billion out of $4.8 billion in civilian payroll cuts in fiscal 2013 will come from the paychecks of residents of the District, Maryland and Virginia.
The cuts also will have a “very substantial” impact on the private sector because of reductions in contract spending, Hale said, although he did not provide details. Uniformed personnel are exempt from the sequester.
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