Pentagon notifies Congress of likely furloughs

2.20.13 — WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Sec­re­tary Leon Panetta told Con­gress on Wednes­day that if auto­matic gov­ern­ment spend­ing cuts kick in on March 1 he may be com­pelled to fur­lough the “vast major­ity” of the Defense Department’s 800,000 civil­ian workers.

He also said the across-the-board spend­ing reduc­tions would “put us on a path toward a hol­low force,” mean­ing a mil­i­tary inca­pable of ful­fill­ing all of its missions.

In a writ­ten mes­sage to employ­ees, Panetta said that he noti­fied mem­bers of Con­gress Wednes­day that if the White House and Con­gress can­not strike a deficit reduc­tion deal before March 1 to avoid the fur­loughs, all affected work­ers will get at least 30 days’ advance notice.

The fur­loughs would be part of a broader plan the Pen­ta­gon is prepar­ing in order to cut $46 bil­lion through the end of this bud­get year, which ends Sept. 30. More cuts would come in future years as long as the auto­matic gov­ern­ment spend­ing cuts, known as seques­tra­tion, remained in effect.

“In the event of seques­tra­tion we will do every­thing we can to be able to con­tinue to per­form our core mis­sion of pro­vid­ing for the secu­rity of the United States, but 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 wrote.

Adding his voice to the bud­get debate, Sec­re­tary of State John Kerry said the fis­cal impasse is a seri­ous threat to Amer­i­can cred­i­bil­ity around the world.

“Think about it: It is hard to tell the lead­er­ship of any num­ber of coun­tries that they must resolve their eco­nomic issues if we don’t resolve our own,” Kerry said Wednes­day in a speech aat the Uni­ver­sity of Virginia.

Panetta was fly­ing Wednes­day to Brus­sels to attend a NATO defense min­is­ters meet­ing. Spokesman George Lit­tle told reporters en route that Panetta would tell his coun­ter­parts that across-the-board bud­get cuts will hurt not only the U.S. mil­i­tary but also the abil­ity of NATO to respond to crises.

Lit­tle said the Pen­ta­gon is also dis­cussing the pos­si­bil­ity of not being able to send mil­i­tary units on planned rota­tions to var­i­ous places around the world. In antic­i­pa­tion of cuts, the Pen­ta­gon has already decided not to send one air­craft car­rier back to the Per­sian Gulf, reduc­ing the U.S. pres­ence there to one carrier.

Pen­ta­gon offi­cials have said their fur­loughs would be struc­tured so that nearly all 800,000 civil­ian work­ers lose one day of work per week for 22 weeks, prob­a­bly start­ing in late April. That means they would lose 20 per­cent of their pay over that period.

The Pen­ta­gon has begun dis­cussing details of the fur­loughs with defense worker union officials.

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama has exempted mil­i­tary per­son­nel from furloughs.

House Speaker John Boehner put the blame on Obama and said he agrees with Panetta that auto­matic spend­ing cuts would dev­as­tate the military.

Boehner released a copy of Panetta’s let­ter for­mally noti­fy­ing Con­gress that the Pen­ta­gon will have to con­sider fur­lough­ing a large por­tion of its civil­ian work­force if seques­tra­tion kicks in.

“The fur­loughs con­tem­plated by this notice will do real harm to our national secu­rity,” Panetta wrote in his con­gres­sional noti­fi­ca­tion let­ter, adding that it would make troops less ready for com­bat and slow the acqui­si­tion of impor­tant weapons.

“Over­all, seques­tra­tion will put us on a path toward a hol­low force and inflict seri­ous dam­age on our national secu­rity,” Panetta wrote.

The only civil­ian Pen­ta­gon work­ers who would be exempt from fur­loughs would be Senate-confirmed polit­i­cal appointees such as the defense sec­re­tary and deputy defense sec­re­tary, as well as a rel­a­tively small num­ber of work­ers deemed essen­tial to pro­tect the safety of defense prop­erty and personnel.

Panetta said the admin­is­tra­tion is still work­ing with Con­gress to avoid auto­matic bud­get cuts by reach­ing agree­ment on a deficit reduc­tion plan.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Feb 20 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.