Sequesterization?

[Teatownclown]

It's been a few days since this country got sequestered. How many casualties as TNF sustained?

Are you saying you like this form of management?

[Conan71]

Are you saying you like this form of management?

It was your guy's idea in the first place.  He's lazy and demonstrates no imagination except for his immaculate creativity in blaming others for his inaction and pure love ups.  This is not what leadership looks like.

[Hoss]

It was your guy's idea in the first place.  He's lazy and demonstrates no imagination except for his immaculate creativity in blaming others for his inaction and pure love ups.  This is not what leadership looks like.

Yeah, because there's a pant load of leadership in the House going on right now. 

Both parties have a smile load of blame to shoulder here. And most know where most of it falls, if you are to believe those blasted polls.

Wait...what?

[guido911]

Are you saying you like this form of management?

I am saying nothing to you.

[guido911]

Just look at all the disasters we are now seeing with sequester.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Even if you agree with Keith Ellison and hate Sean Hannity, you should be totally embarrassed by Ellison's behavior.  It was abominable.   It was worse than most of you lefties claim O'Reilly and Hannity to be combined.  Disgusting....

Yes...in the RWRE MurdochianFantasyWorld, reality is disgusting....  I guess you really don't watch Hannity much...he is so much worse than that Ellison guy, it is truly amazing when he says anything about another persons bad manners or obnoxiousness.  But I guess one has to be the champion at that kind of thing to recognize all the nuances....and he is almost as good as O'Reilly at bad manners, obnoxious, disgusting and despicable.

[Townsend]

State National Guard employees to get furlough notices

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20130306_11_A1_Moreth85748

More than 1,000 Oklahoma National Guard employees will receive furlough notices this week, warning that they could see essentially a 20 percent reduction in pay between April and September. The notices will inform federal technicians of the Oklahoma National Guard that furloughs would start in 30 days and would include one day a week until September, or about 22 days, said Guard spokesman Maj. Geoff Legler. The furloughs are part of broad federal budget cuts that went into effect Friday known as the sequester.

[Townsend]

Sequester-related education cuts hitting schools on reservations, military bases

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/sequester-related-education-cuts-hitting-schools-on-reservations-military-bases/2013/03/05/0887fed4-8506-11e2-98a3-b3db6b9ac586_story.html?wprss=rss_politics

The Window Rock School District, in the heart of the Navajo nation in Arizona, is proposing the unthinkable: closing three of its seven schools as a result of the federal sequester.

The schools are among 1,600 public schools on Native American reservations and military bases that are feeling the impact of federal cuts now, months before the rest of the country's classrooms see the effect of reduced dollars from Washington.

"We may have to close those schools — we don't have any other avenues at all," Superintendent Debbie Jackson-Dennison said, adding that she will cut five administrators, 25 support staff and 35 certified teachers by the end of May.

School bus routes, vital in a large rural setting, will be reduced beginning this month, guaranteeing some children will ride an hour to and from school. The school closures are expected by Aug. 1, creating overcrowding in remaining schools, she said.

The worst part, Dennison said, is that congressional lawmakers don't seem to care. "You get a feeling that this doesn't really matter," she said Monday during a meeting of representatives from schools on Native American reservations and military bases in Washington.

Leaders of schools on other reservations and military bases said they already reduced their current school budgets in anticipation of the sequester, letting job openings go unfilled, trimming professional development, dropping bus routes, cutting guidance counselors.

Lacking local tax dollars

The federal sequester requires the Department of Education to cut $1.9 billion in aid to the nation's 15,000 school districts, money used to help educate poor and disabled children from kindergarten through 12th grade. Most districts have already received their federal dollars for the current school year; any impact from sequestration would affect the next school year.

Public education is largely funded by state and local governments; the federal government pays about 10 percent of the costs. Federal dollars are largely concentrated on poor children and those with disabilities, and the amounts are determined according to the number of children in each category in every state.

But two exceptions are schools on Indian reservations and military bases, which receive a larger share of their funds from Washington as compensation for the fact that they can't raise funds from local property taxes. For example, the federal government pays 60 percent, or $14.7 million, of Window Rock School District's $24.3 million annual budget.

Those 1,600 schools are feeling an immediate impact as federal payments are cut, and their pain will soon be shared by the rest of the country, Education Secretary Arne Duncan told their representatives Monday. "You guys are the leading edge of this," he said. "I honestly never thought that we'd be in this situation. I'm stunned that we are here."

In addition to funds for poor and disabled children, schools on federal lands receive a third stream of money known as Impact Aid. Under the sequester, they are seeing cuts to all three categories.

"Impact Aid was set up to protect you from the vagaries of the budget," Duncan told the school officials. "And now you're taking the brunt of this. You shouldn't have to be in that position. . . . You guys are getting the triple whammy."

Children who attend school on military bases and on Native American reservations deserve better, Duncan said. "These are children who deserve the best education possible," he said.

Resolving the sequester is "not rocket science," Duncan said. "They could come together in a couple of hours and do this. What it takes is courage and compromise on both sides. When you have intransigence . . . children get hurt."

Verlon Jose, president of the Baboquivari Unified School District, which runs five schools on reservation land near Tucson, said the cuts were taking place at time when his high school graduation rate had improved from 39 percent in 2009 to 72 percent in 2012. The cuts jeopardize those gains, he said. "It will be difficult if not impossible to sustain the level of services and support our students need," Jose said.

Mea culpa for 'pink slips'

Duncan offered a mea culpa of sorts Monday, saying that he misspoke on national television last week when he said that teachers were already losing jobs as a result of the budget sequester.

"When I said 'pink slips' that was probably the wrong word," Duncan told reporters at a news conference related to the sequester. "Language matters, and I need to be very, very clear."

In discussing the cuts to federal aid to schools on "Face the Nation" last Sunday, Duncan said "there are literally teachers now who are getting pink slips, who are getting notices that they can't come back this fall."

Pressed to identify districts that have begun laying off staff, Duncan singled out Kanawha County, a community in West Virginia. But school officials in that county said that while the cuts in federal aid added to their financial burden, they were going to have to cut jobs regardless of the sequester because of other financial issues.

Republicans seized on Duncan's comments as evidence that the Obama administration was overstating the impact of the sequester.

"We had a little drama," Duncan said Monday. "Got it. Lesson learned."

The dust-up is distracting from what Duncan called the real problem — the impact of the sequester on education. "If more political leaders had a chance to talk to real people, to real kids, I think it would change things. We need to get the heck out of Washington."

[Gaspar]

Here is our president.
The administration is telling agencies who attempt to do their jobs by managing the 2.8% decrease in spending by becoming more efficient and cutting cots, not to bother, because it does not support the political agenda.

In the internal email, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service official Charles Brown said he asked if he could try to spread out the sequester cuts in his region to minimize the impact, and he said he was told not to do anything that would lessen the dire impacts Congress had been warned of.
"We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that 'APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.' So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be," Mr. Brown, in the internal email, said his superiors told him.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/5/email-tells-feds-make-sequester-painful-promised/#ixzz2MrocoD4U
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Any environmentalists out there??? 
Crickets
Crickets
Crickets

The administration is willing to allow unnecessary damage to the environment to prove a point for political gain.

Any liberal government accountability hawks out there??
Crickets
Crickets
Crickets

The administration is TELLING agencies to avoid efficiency and accountability to prove a point for political gain.

[Townsend]

The administration is telling agencies who attempt to do their jobs by managing the 2.8% decrease in spending by becoming more efficient and cutting cots, not to bother, because it does not support the political agenda.

In the internal email, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service official Charles Brown said he asked if he could try to spread out the sequester cuts in his region to minimize the impact, and he said he was told not to do anything that would lessen the dire impacts Congress had been warned of.

The administration is TELLING agencies to avoid efficiency and accountability to prove a point for political gain.

The article doesn't link the email.  Do you have a copy of it?

[Red Arrow]

The article doesn't link the email.  Do you have a copy of it?

http://griffin.house.gov/sites/griffin.house.gov/files/email.pdf

[Townsend]

The administration is telling agencies who attempt to do their jobs by managing the 2.8% decrease in spending by becoming more efficient and cutting cots, not to bother, because it does not support the political agenda.

In the internal email, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service official Charles Brown said he asked if he could try to spread out the sequester cuts in his region to minimize the impact, and he said he was told not to do anything that would lessen the dire impacts Congress had been warned of.
Mr. Brown, in the internal email, said his superiors told him.

The administration is TELLING agencies to avoid efficiency and accountability to prove a point for political gain.

And then there's this:

The Most Convoluted Sequester Controversy Known to Man?

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/03/the-most-convoluted-sequester-controversy-known-to-man/

Peel back the layers of any sequester story, and you'll get some tears.

In perhaps the most convoluted back-and-forth yet regarding whether the Obama administration has overstated the effects of automatic spending cuts, the Department of Agriculture says an employee's email has been misinterpreted and taken out of context by congressional Republicans and news reporters.

The story began with a leaked email which seemed to indicate USDA had told one of its workers to make the sequester cuts as painful as promised, dismissing his request for leeway to spread the cuts out and avoid furloughing his employees.

Republican Reps. Tim Griffith and Kristi Noem reportedly circulated the email, which came from a USDA field worker named Charlie Brown, who works for the Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service (APHIS) in Raleigh, N.C.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was asked about it Monday before the House Agriculture Committee.

Brown's email seemed to indicate that USDA shut down an appeal for budgetary leeway, telling him that USDA had already told Congress the sequester would mean cuts to services, and "you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be."

Rep. Griffith posted the entire email on his House website.

USDA released a statement that "Several reports yesterday misrepresented a USDA effort to explain the impacts of budget cuts to an employee in USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)" and explaining the saga in detail.

An agency official told USDA's side of the story in a conversation with ABC News on Wednesday. An official said that USDA not only granted the requested spending leeway, it had already planned to avoid the furloughs.

According to an email chain obtained by ABC, a USDA budgeting official relayed Brown's request that cuts to aquaculture services — that is, help in farming fish — be spread out over 24 states, instead of eight. When the agency wrote back to Brown, an official told ABC News, USDA actually told him that it already planned to spread the cuts out over 24 states, and that in effect USDA intended to do what he suggested. This move will, in fact, avoid furloughs to APHIS staff, the USDA official said.

Here's how USDA responded to Brown's inquiry:

We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that "APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs." So, it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.

In other words, USDA says, Brown had already gotten his wish, according to the official. He thought the cuts would happen over eight states, and he wanted to spread them out over 24. USDA told him it already wanted to do that. For some reason, a budgeting official warned Brown not to contradict the impact of avoiding furloughs and spreading cuts as he seems to have desired.

Where the story gets even stickier, though, is that USDA insists this has nothing to do with the sequester. The "notification to Congress," the official told ABC, was for the agency's FY2013 budget request.

That request never really amounted to anything. USDA had planned to cut funds, the official said, but it never got the chance to, as Congress continued to fund USDA at previous levels through a continuing resolution. Now that the sequester is happening, those advertised cuts (and their "impact") will apparently go into effect as part of USDA's sequester plan. Still, the official said, USDA hasn't advertised the relevant "impact" to Congress in sequester-related terms — it hasn't told Congress about them at all since last year — rendering the imputation of a political motive spurious.

That's USDA's side of the story: a misinterpreted email, leaked and taken out of context, leading to erroneous news reports that President Obama has falsely amplified sequester pain in a ploy to raise taxes. Based on the email chain, it checks out. A USDA official relayed Brown's question — asked on a conference call — about "spread[ing] the aquaculture cut in the ER to all States instead of the specific 8 Aquaculture States."

Brown has not returned requests for comment from ABC News, seeking to clear all this up. In his leaked email to colleagues, he specifically referenced a question about the sequester — not about FY2013 budget cuts. More would become clear with information from APHIS on the cuts, their implementation, and how USDA's response was received; APHIS directed ABC News to the main USDA office, in response to an email sent from ABC to Brown.

Meanwhile, the USDA's ominous-sounding warning not to "contradict" the impact of spending cuts has resonated with journalists and Republicans on the hunt for signs that the administration has refused to defray some of the sequester's most deleterious impacts as political gamesmanship continues in Washington.

If nothing else, the controversy has spread awareness of aquaculture.

Woo, we can make up some serious smile, can't we?

[Red Arrow]

And then there's this:

The Most Convoluted Sequester Controversy Known to Man?

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/03/the-most-convoluted-sequester-controversy-known-to-man/

Woo, we can make up some serious smile, can't we?

Do you have a copy of the entire email?

[guido911]

A little humor to help us get through this living nightmare we are all living through because of the sequester. The unimaginable horror pushed by Obama and others is playing out before us.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2013/03/09/saturday-night-funny-video-obama-s-decision-pardon-sequester-and-send-i

I like the last person's answer.

[JCnOwasso]

I am writing this while in the midst of the sequester... our office is in shambles.... I am not sure *static*... impending doom *unintelligible screams*... HELP HELP...

Okay, seriously.  Yes, I have many friends who are being furloughed.  Most are from the DoD and a few other agencies.  But let's get real, these people can say that they want to spread the cuts as much as possible to reduce the impact, but these are the exact type of cuts that would take place if there budgets are permanent.  They are not going to cut programs or terminate contacts, because doing so costs money, and in some cases it will cost more to terminate than it would to just let it run its course.  And even more so, they are not going to terminate big contracts because those big contracts equal big money to PAC's and to campaigns.  Cutting the street level bureaucrat is the easiest and most effective way to 1)make a point 2)make small reductions in budgets. 

I am not a fan of Colburn, but I do agree with him that there are many programs out there that should be cut off at the knees.  Also, i went through some of the previous budget numbers and something that really made me a little sad is that we have a 10:1 ratio on defense to education spending.  And for a matter of reference, in 2009 the budget for congress was 4.4B compared to 13.9B for education.  I am not really sure what to think about that.