Posts Tagged ‘debt ceiling agreement’

Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter sent letters to the governors of 10 states slated to endure the harshest impacts from sequestration, alerting them to the direct and indirect consequences $40-plus billion in across-the-board spending reductions will heap on their states’ military installations. The 10 states projected to suffer the most are California, Virginia, Texas, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Alabama, and Washington. All states will be affected, but those 10 will bear the largest brunt …

President Obama signed an order Friday night to carry out the $85 billion sequester of fiscal 2013 spending, making official the across-the-board spending cuts that are widely projected to undercut military readiness. Along with the order, the Office of Management and Budget submitted a report to Congress detailing the cuts for each agency. Over the course of the entire fiscal year, the sequester requires a 7.8 percent reduction in discretionary defense spending, or $43 billion …

In his first press conference as defense secretary held on the day sequestration initially went into effect, Chuck Hagel bluntly outlined the consequences for each of the services. “The Navy will gradually stand down at least four wings. The first wing will stand down in April. Effective immediately, Air Force flying hours will be cut back. This will have a major impact on training and readiness …

Following the defeat in the Senate of competing plans to address the sequester, senators from both parties continue to consider alternate ways to afford federal agencies some flexibility when they carry out $85 billion of automatic spending reductions going into effect today. On Thursday, a Republican proposal that would have provided agencies greater flexibility to carry out the cuts received only 38 votes, far short of the 60 needed to advance the measure …

Early indications are that Senate Democrats won’t turn the March 27 deadline for passing a new stopgap funding measure into a showdown with their counterparts over restoring, or at least mitigating, $85 billion in across-the-board cuts set to be imposed today. Since the deal at the beginning of the year to avert the fiscal cliff was reached, many lawmakers have been pointing to the negotiations over the next fiscal 2013 continuing resolution as the best opportunity to address the sequester …

Congress left town Thursday without dealing with sequestration, triggering the imposition of spending cuts of $43 billion on the Pentagon starting today, about 8 percent of the military’s budget. Under budget law, President Obama must sign an order by 11:59 p.m. Friday to begin a total of $85 billion in spending reductions across all agencies’ fiscal 2013 budgets. The law also requires the Office of Management and Budget to prepare a detailed report by today on the agency-by-agency impact of the cuts …

Installation support will be forced to endure severe cuts under sequestration, affecting routine maintenance, construction and some military family programs, according to a roundtable of senior Army officials held Wednesday. The Army has slashed day-to-day spending for installation support to free up funds for other priorities, such as training and equipping troops destined for Afghanistan …

Spending by the Department of Veterans Affairs on disability benefits, veterans education and health care is exempt from across-the-board cuts that will imposed under sequestration, but plenty of other federal programs that support veterans, especially those within the Pentagon, are not. Veterans likely will find themselves most vulnerable to cutbacks in military spending for health care and related programs …

Senate Republicans settled Wednesday on a plan to address sequestration that will compete with a Democratic one, but both measures are expected to fail on the Senate floor today. After considering a number of ways to mitigate $85 billion in across-the-board spending reductions slated to go into effect starting Friday, Republican lawmakers opted for a plan allowing President Obama to replace those fiscal 2013 cuts with an alternate plan trimming outlays by $82.5 billion through FY 2018 …

Local school districts serving substantial numbers of military children would face funding cuts immediately after sequestration is triggered Friday, confronting them with a dilemma as to how to make up a shortfall of tens of millions dollars before the school year ends in the spring, Education Secretary Arne Duncan told reporters Wednesday at a White House briefing. Cuts to school systems that rely on the Impact Aid program — including those enrolling children of service members who live on or near military installations and children who live on Indian reservations — would total $60 million in the current fiscal year …