How the sequester would affect New York
The White House. Photo: Mark H. Anbinder CC some rights reserved
Update, 2/28/13: Watertown reporter Joanna Richards reported on this question for today’s NCPR news, with a particular focus on Fort Drum. Find that story here.
Federal sequestration is seeming more and more likely as we approach the March 1 deadline. The possibility has been floating around for some time, but until quite recently it didn’t seem possible that our federal government would allow things to get to this point (for those who haven’t fully acquainted themselves with the idea of sequestration, perhaps thinking it might go away, here’s a handy explainer from CNN.)
Sequestration would trigger automatic spending cuts to government agencies that would total $1.2 trillion over 10 years. The cuts would be split in half, between defense and domestic discretionary spending.
This is a huge number, divided up among programs that are frankly too huge to get one’s mind around. However, new information from the White House might prove useful in that regard. The President’s office has come up with a plan it says will avoid the sequester (numbers in previous link; more explanation from the Washington Post here.) Because this is politics, some of the language in the White House document I’m about to quote here is a little political (what can you do?)
I’m quoting this from the document (this is the full New York section — there’s more in the document about national impacts and what should be done.) Here’s how the White House says sequestration will affect us here in New York:
Teachers and Schools: New York will lose approximately $42.7 million in funding for primary and secondary education, putting around 590 teacher and aide jobs at risk. In addition about 70,000 fewer students would be served and approximately120 fewer schools would receive funding.Education for Children with Disabilities: In addition, New York will lose approximately $36.3 million in funds for about 440 teachers, aides, and staff who help children with disabilities.
Work-Study Jobs: Around 4,520 fewer low income students in New York would receive aid to help them finance the costs of college and around 4,150 fewer students will get work-study jobs that help them pay for college.
Head Start: Head Start and Early Head Start services would be eliminated for approximately 4,300 children in New York, reducing access to critical early education.
Protections for Clean Air and Clean Water: New York would lose about $12,869,000 in environmental funding to ensure clean water and air quality, as well as prevent pollution from pesticides and hazardous waste. In addition, New York could lose another $1,201,000 in grants for fish and wildlife protection.
Military Readiness: In New York, approximately 12,000 civilian Department of Defense employees would be furloughed, reducing gross pay by around $60.9 million in total.
Army: Base operation funding would be cut by about $108 million in New York.
Law Enforcement and Public Safety Funds for Crime Prevention and Prosecution: New York will lose about $780,000 in Justice Assistance Grants that support law enforcement, prosecution and courts, crime prevention and education, corrections and community corrections, drug treatment and enforcement, and crime victim and witness initiatives.
Job Search Assistance to Help those in New York find Employment and Training: New York will lose about $884,000 in funding for job search assistance, referral, and placement, meaning around 46,230 fewer people will get the help and skills they need to find employment.
Child Care: Up to 2,300 disadvantaged and vulnerable children could lose access to child care, which is also essential for working parents to hold down a job.
Vaccines for Children: In New York around 7,170 fewer children will receive vaccines for diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, whooping cough, influenza, and Hepatitis B due to reduced funding for vaccinations of about $490,000.
Public Health: New York will lose approximately $1,070,000 in funds to help upgrade its ability to respond to public health threats including infectious diseases, natural disasters, and biological, chemical, nuclear, and radiological events. In addition, New York will lose about $5,730,000 in grants to help prevent and treat substance abuse, resulting in around 6,100 fewer admissions to substance abuse programs. And New York’s health departments will lose about $2,726,000 resulting in around 68,200 fewer HIV tests.
STOP Violence Against Women Program: New York could lose up to $412,000 in funds that provide services to victims of domestic violence, resulting in up to 1,600 fewer victims being served.
Nutrition Assistance for Seniors: New York would lose approximately $1,447,000 in funds that provide meals for seniors.
So what do you think? How will this affect you?
Tags: budget, economy, federal government, sequester, sequestration
I’ll let you know after it happens, if it happens and to what extent it impacts me or anyone I know.
Until then, they are just numbers.
Loom at the Post story. Both sides are like a broken record.
I give up.
Sorry “look” not “loom”.
“Sequestration would trigger automatic spending cuts to government agencies”
No it won’t.
Sequestration would trigger a smaller increase than previously anticipated, nevertheless, more spending.
Repeat. Sequestration will result in more government spending than 2012.
This thing about releasing illegal immigrants seems like a political ploy. Most of the news coverage doesn’t seem to portray it as such. I guess they are not too confident with their “plan” to avert these problems:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-sequester-nears-immigration-detainees-are-released/2013/02/26/bc00ffba-8038-11e2-b99e-6baf4ebe42df_story.html?hpid=z1&wp_login_redirect=0
What a bunch of clowns we have representing us.
JDM when you budget a certain amount for something and you have less it is called a cut. A smaller increase is still a cut. Budgeting is not done in real time. These cuts are modest but they are still cuts. That is why the GOP and some democrats are willing to go along.
This will especially hurt the local economies near military bases. But most everyone will suffer a little. I agree with Paul that the release of illegal immigrants sounds political, but is that a big surprise? I assume the cuts they make (to the extent that they have a choice) are not going to be the ones that the Republicans would like – probably just the opposite.
If I were Chuck Hagel, I would make sure that the cuts to the military fell heaviest on the military installations in the congressional districts of the most intransigent anti-compromise Republicans. And they shouldnt complain.
Imagine in our huge, bloated Federal Government, that the genius Obama cannot find any waste.
He has to cut front line jobs, first.
What a shameful state of affairs.
JDM, has an interesting point.
So the sequester does not cut spending, it simply slows the growth rate?
What portion of the population even cares anymore?
mervel:
That is correct. All the hubbub about the sky-is-falling plays well to low-information voters. They’re all in a tizzy about this. That’s what Obama is hoping for.
Here are Rand Paul’s comments.
“PAUL: It’s a pittance. I mean, it’s a slowdown in the rate of growth. There are no real cuts happening over 10 years. ”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/02/20/rand_paul_sequester_a_pittance_that_nibbles_at_the_edges.html
Personally, it won’t affect me at all. It’s political BS. The clowns are running the circus.
“Imagine in our huge, bloated Federal Government, that the genius Obama cannot find any waste.”
He couldn’t find water if he fell out of a boat. Sadly, the Republican leadership is no better.
I find it extremely annoying that for all the talk about military cuts, I have yet to see any multi-billion dollar system cut out. Instead, we lay off civilian workers at the bases, and put off maintenance. Grumman and Lockheed and General Dynamics will walk away with their pockets stuffed full as usual while the little guy takes it in the butt.
I scratch my head about this. One one hand the jobs list above gets cut. On the other, increasing taxes is the first order of business, maybe some cuts are made (they didn’t come about in the last compromise) and businesses shed jobs or transfer work to minimize their tax load.
To paraphrase Nancy Pelosi, we won’t know what is in sequester until we pass through it.
JDM, a “pittance” perhaps but a cut none the less.
Jeff, yes raising taxes where we are right now is a mistake. The last round hammered consumer spending. Just a dumb idea.
I’m not sure about the “won’t make any difference because the budget is so huge” angle. Supposedly, cuts must be across the board in discretionary spending, including military (entitlements, where the runaway growth problem is supposed to be greatest are protected). Since there is (allegedly) no choice on what will be cut, there could be serious consequences. If you own a 2 ton pickup truck, let’s say with lots of non-necessary whistles and bells like many today have, and have to cut 2% of it’s weight, and could choose what will be cut it’s one thing. But is you have to cut 2% of every component without choice of what,( steering wheel, fuel line, wiring, etc.) it could be a problem. Whether it works out that way is something else.
TOLarry: “the Republican leadership is no better”
Agreed. We’ll have to do something about that.
Paul: “JDM, a “pittance” perhaps but a cut none the less.”
Ok, Paul, you’ve tasted the Koolaid.
I do want to know how it is possible to spend more money next year than this year and still have to lay off 800,000 Pentagon workers, shut down the TSA, close border patrols, not educate kids, no daycare, no first responders.
All this, with a budget increase.
Hmmmm.
newt:
Here’s a more accurate analogy.
You own a 2 ton pickup. You plan on putting 5% more weight in it this year than last year.
You end up putting only 2% more weight in it.
Paul would say you just the amount of weight in the truck by 3%, even though the truck is heavier than it was last year.
Most would say that you just increased the weight of the truck by 2%.
should be:
weight in the truck was cut by 3%
Let’s not count the Republicans out just yet. Chris Christie seems to have figured out the electoral equation and has planted his formidable bulk right in the “center” of things. It will be fascinating to see if his strategy works.
Something is amiss when we can’t possibly sustain a roughly 2.4% cut in a 3.5 TRILLION dollar federal budget. To me, that’s the real travesty in this entire drama.
I would add a little tidbit to Tootightmike’s comment about the defense budget. A lesser know fact is that not only are the defense contractor’s mostly protected from the proposed cuts in the military budget, many of those same corporations are experiencing tremendous growth in their revenues as a result of recent arms deals with other nations. Saudi Arabia being but one nation that’s ramped up its purchase of military hardware from American owned defense contractors. The NY Time article below points out that American owned defense contractors sold nearly $67 Billion dollars worth of arms overseas last year,most of it to middle eastern allies. See below:
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/a-2010-saudi-shopping-spree-06520/
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/27/world/middleeast/us-foreign-arms-sales-reach-66-3-billion-in-2011.html?_r=0
Good point, Pete.
matter of fact, those congress critters oughta be asking for the deepest cuts.
If i understand correctly the Obama Administration developed the mechanism that will determine the cuts and the entire sequestration scheme. And they are the same people that refuse to cut any growth in the budget whatsoever. Sounds like a well thought out plan of blackmail to me.
JDMs 7:11 pickup analogy is correct. Only in politics can an increase be called a cut. It’s not a cut, it’s an INCREASE in spending and the reports of all those programs that will shut down is a farce. Look into it yourselves NCPR, stop depending on press releases and the official gov’t propaganda administration.
“Here’s a more accurate analogy.
You own a 2 ton pickup. You plan on putting 5% more weight in it this year than last year.
You end up putting only 2% more weight in it.
Paul would say you just the amount of weight in the truck by 3%, even though the truck is heavier than it was last year.
Most would say that you just increased the weight of the truck by 2%.”
Good analogy. This is what we call a BUDGET CUT. A simpler way to look at it – You budget for x and instead you spend y which is less than x. What am I missing?
The projections are that the US economy will lose 1.5% off the GDP growth because of the sequester. Maryland and Virginia will be hit hard, but not New York state so much. But I bet the Watertown/Fort Drum area businesses suffer.
How about, just to make it real, we cut the pay of all the elected and appointed people in Washington.
Also cut their health insurance and pension plans past, present and future.
Oh, and why not have the airlines pay for the flight controllers?
Paul: “What am I missing?”
That the budget is actually increasing.
No cuts to the spending year-over-year.
Obama is maximizing pain for political gain.
There is no need to layoff one worker since there will the same amount of money, plus some.
There is no need to increase taxes, since we are already planning on spending more money next year than this year.
I could go on.
Pete, that’s the first sensible idea you’ve come up with in some time! I agree completely!
JDM, 11:30- Exactly. This is similar to the period in which some in our gov’t were claiming we had a budget surplus when we did not in fact have a surplus! It was only a surplus because it was more revenue than expected for the period, but we were still spending every dime and borrowing too! Only in politics.
For a sitting president to proclaim budget cuts in a period when the year-over-year spending is increasing is, is….
One might consider the president’s actions politically motivated.
Others might think he is going mad.
Oh, wait. Bob Woodward thinks it’s the latter.
The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward ripped into President Barack Obama on “Morning Joe” today, saying he’s exhibiting a “kind of madness I haven’t seen in a long time” for a decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf because of budget concerns.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/bob-woodward-obama-sequester-republicans-2013-2#ixzz2M7jkBAf3
Border Patrol agents will have a 14 week furlough – one day per pay period. It would be good to see Congress do the same.
Another one flies over the cuckoos nest.
According to Jay Carney, Janet Napolitano freed hundreds of prisoners because of feared budget cuts.
“It’s very hard for me to believe that they can’t find cuts elsewhere in their agency,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told CBS News on Tuesday. “I frankly think this is outrageous…I can’t believe that they can’t find the kind of savings they need out of that department short of letting criminals go free.”
Hey Janet. The budget isn’t getting cut. You’ve been listening to ABC, CNN, CBS, NPR, and NCPR too long.
Next year’s budget will be larger than this year’s budget.
Why don’t you go out and round up those voters, I, I mean prisoners.
I’m pretty sure DHS could have covered the cost of keeping the criminals locked up by cancelling the order for the 1.4 billion rounds of ammo they just put out.
If a family owes $1,200,000 and has a house worth $110,000 and an income of $79,000 a year, it would make sense to both cut spending and increase income. Maybe mom and dad would each have two jobs, but it could be done. By extension, the federal government could do the same thing. Cut spending, increase income.
Why can Republicans not see this?
There are *some* Civil Servant workers who this furlough will not hurt. Like the ones who have a military pention plus their federal salary plus their spouses salary and maybe a kid or two. But then their are a lot of Civil Service workers who are the sole income for their families or who are single parents and already are struggling to make from paycheck topaycheck. I would the gov’t shut down for the 22 days rather than cut my wages by 27% for the rest of the year.