How budget cuts could affect you

Mar 2, 10:44 AM EST — Auto­matic spend­ing cuts that took effect Fri­day are expected to touch a vast range of gov­ern­ment ser­vices. Some examples:

DEFENSE

One of the Navy’s pre­mier war­ships, the air­craft car­rier USS Harry S. Tru­man, sits pier-side in Nor­folk, Va., its deploy­ment to the Per­sian Gulf delayed. The car­rier and its 5,000-person crew were to leave Feb. 8, along with the guided-missile cruiser USS Get­tys­burg. The Navy also began plans to grad­u­ally shut down four of its air wings — which include 50 to 60 air­craft each and are assigned to the car­ri­ers — and delay and can­cel the deploy­ments of sev­eral other ships.

Fur­lough notices will begin going out later this month to about 800,000 defense depart­ment civil­ians, who will lose a day’s pay each week for more than five months. The Army will let go more than 3,000 tem­po­rary and con­tract employ­ees and begin­ning in April, it will can­cel main­te­nance at depots which will force 5,000 more lay­offs. The Air Force Thun­der­birds and the Navy’s Blue Angels will can­cel air show appearances.

Vet­er­ans’ funer­als at Arling­ton National Ceme­tery could be cut to 24 a day from 31, mean­ing delays in buri­als for troops from past wars. Troops killed in action in Afghanistan will be the pri­or­ity — they are usu­ally laid to rest within two weeks, Army spokesman George Wright said. But over­all funer­als would be reduced by about 160 a month because of fur­loughs among civil­ian employ­ees who work with fam­i­lies to sched­ule ser­vices as well as fur­loughs among crews that dig the graves and do other grounds work.

Pen­ta­gon invest­ments in coun­ter­ing cyberthreats and nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion will be at risk, says Michael Vick­ers, the under­sec­re­tary of defense for intel­li­gence. And the head of the Defense Intel­li­gence Agency, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, says the agency could be hit hard because it depends heav­ily on mil­i­tary and civil­ian per­son­nel to accom­plish its mission.

Coast Guard res­cue air­craft will fly fewer hours and cut­ters will patrol the seas for fewer hours, says Com­man­dant Adm. Robert J. Papp. Emer­gen­cies will be a pri­or­ity and inter­dic­tions of ille­gal immi­grants, drugs and ille­gal fish­ing could decline.

HOMELAND SECURITY

Doc­u­ments reviewed by The Asso­ci­ated Press show that more than 2,000 ille­gal immi­grants have been freed from jails across the coun­try since Feb. 15. An Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment spokesman, how­ever, reit­er­ated the num­ber is in the hun­dreds. ICE offi­cials say they had reviewed sev­eral hun­dred cases of immi­grants and decided to put them on an “appro­pri­ate, more cost-effective form of super­vised release” in a move started Tuesday.

FOOD SAFETY

There could be an esti­mated 2,100 fewer food safety inspec­tions and increased risks to con­sumers because of the cuts and the fact that lack of a new 2013 bud­get means the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion is held at last year’s spend­ing level. Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion Com­mis­sioner Mar­garet Ham­burg says most of the effects wouldn’t be felt for a while, and the agency won’t have to fur­lough workers.

HEALTH CARE

Hos­pi­tals, doc­tors and other Medicare providers will see a 2 per­cent cut in gov­ern­ment reim­burse­ments because once the cut­back takes effect, Medicare will reim­burse them at 98 cents on the dol­lar. But they aren’t com­plain­ing because the pain could be a lot worse if Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and con­gres­sional Repub­li­cans actu­ally did reach a sweep­ing agree­ment to reduce fed­eral deficits. Auto­matic cuts tak­ing effect Fri­day would reduce Medicare spend­ing by about $100 bil­lion over a decade. But Obama had put on the table $400 bil­lion in health care cuts, mainly from Medicare. And Repub­li­cans wanted more.

On the other hand, Obama’s health over­haul law is expected to roll out on time and largely unscathed by the cuts. Part of the rea­son is that the law’s major sub­si­dies to help unin­sured peo­ple buy pri­vate health cov­er­age are struc­tured as tax cred­its. So is the Afford­able Care Act’s assis­tance for small busi­nesses. Tax cred­its have tra­di­tion­ally been exempted from auto­matic cuts.

TRANSPORTATION

The nation’s busiest air­ports could be forced to close some of their run­ways, caus­ing wide­spread flight delays and can­cel­la­tions. Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Ray LaHood pre­dicts flights to cities like New York, Chicago and San Fran­cisco could have delays of up to 90 min­utes dur­ing peak hours because fewer con­trollers will be on duty.

Though the spend­ing cuts are sched­uled to go into effect on Fri­day, fur­loughs of con­trollers won’t kick in until April because the Fed­eral Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion is required by law to give its employ­ees advance notice. In addi­tion to fur­loughs, the FAA is plan­ning to elim­i­nate mid­night shifts for air traf­fic con­trollers at 60 air­port tow­ers, close over 100 con­trol tow­ers at smaller air­ports and reduce pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance of equipment.

NATIONAL PARKS

Vis­it­ing hours at all 398 national parks are likely to be cut and sen­si­tive areas would be blocked off to the pub­lic. Thou­sands of sea­sonal work­ers look­ing for jobs would not be hired, accord­ing to Inte­rior Sec­re­tary Ken Salazar. Salazar and National Park Ser­vice direc­tor Jon Jarvis said vis­i­tors would encounter locked restrooms, fewer rangers and trash cans emp­tied less frequently.

FEDERAL WORKERS

More than half of the nation’s 2.1 mil­lion gov­ern­ment work­ers may be required to take fur­loughs if agen­cies are forced to trim bud­gets. At the Pen­ta­gon alone that could mean 800,000 civil­ian work­ers would be off for 22 days each, spread across more than five months — and lose 20 per­cent of their pay over that period. Other fed­eral agen­cies are likely to fur­lough sev­eral hun­dred thou­sand more workers.

EDUCATION

Some 70,000 stu­dents enrolled in pre-kindergarten Head Start would be cut from the pro­gram and 14,000 teach­ers would lose their jobs. For stu­dents with spe­cial needs, the cuts would elim­i­nate some 7,200 teach­ers and aides. The Edu­ca­tion Depart­ment is also warn­ing that the cuts will impact up to 29 mil­lion stu­dent loan bor­row­ers and that some lenders may have to lay off staff or even close. Some of the 15 mil­lion col­lege stu­dents who receive grants or work-study assign­ments at some 6,000 col­leges would also see changes.

CONGRESS

Con­gres­sional trips over­seas likely will take a hit. House Speaker John Boehner told Repub­li­can mem­bers in a closed-door meet­ing that he’s sus­pend­ing the use of mil­i­tary air­craft for offi­cial trips by House mem­bers. Law­mak­ers typ­i­cally travel on mil­i­tary planes for fact-finding trips to Afghanistan or Pak­istan, or other con­gres­sional excur­sions to for­eign locales.

NUCLEAR SECURITY

Cleanup of radioac­tive waste at nuclear sites across the coun­try would be delayed. The Energy Depart­ment says the cuts would post­pone work at the department’s highest-risk sites, includ­ing the Han­ford Nuclear Reser­va­tion near Rich­land, Wash., where six tanks are leak­ing radioac­tive waste left over from decades of plu­to­nium pro­duc­tion for nuclear weapons. Other high-risk sites fac­ing work delays are the Oak Ridge Reser­va­tion in Ten­nessee, Savan­nah River Site in South Car­olina and the Idaho National Laboratory.

TAX COLLECTION

Any fur­loughs at the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice will be delayed until sum­mer, after the tax fil­ing sea­son ends, so the agency says it shouldn’t delay tax refunds. But other IRS ser­vices will be affected. Mil­lions of tax­pay­ers may not be able get responses from IRS call cen­ters and tax­payer assis­tance cen­ters. The cuts would delay IRS responses to tax­payer let­ters and force the agency to com­plete fewer tax return reviews, reduc­ing its abil­ity to detect and pre­vent fraud. The IRS says this could result in bil­lions of dol­lars in lost rev­enue to the gov­ern­ment, com­pli­cat­ing deficit reduc­tion efforts.

LABOR

More than 3.8 mil­lion peo­ple job­less for six months or longer could see their unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits reduced by as much as 9.4 per­cent. Thou­sands of vet­er­ans would not receive job coun­sel­ing. Fewer Occu­pa­tional Safety and Health Admin­is­tra­tion inspec­tors could mean 1,200 fewer inspec­tions of dan­ger­ous work sites.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Mar 3 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.