FEDERAL SEQUESTRATION CUTS

Submitted by ub on

Those US sequestration cuts have arrived and the effects are being felt.

Originally a legal term referring generally to the act of valuable property being taken into custody by an agent of the court and locked away for safekeeping. But this term has been adapted by Congress in more recent years to describe a new fiscal policy procedure originally provided for in the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Act of 1985 -- an effort to reform Congressional voting procedures so as to make the size of the Federal government's budget deficit a matter of conscious choice rather than simply the arithmetical outcome of a decentralized appropriations process in which no one ever looked at the cumulative results until it was too late to change them.

If the dozen or so appropriation bills passed separately by Congress provide for total government spending in excess of the limits Congress earlier laid down for itself in the annual Budget Resolution, and if Congress cannot agree on ways to cut back the total (or does not pass a new, higher Budget Resolution), then an "automatic" form of spending cutback takes place. This automatic spending cut is what is called "sequestration." Here is a partial list of it's effects.

NYC’s housing authority may be forced to lay off 500 employees and close down several community centers.

Also, Fire Island National Seashore may be a bit dirtier and have many more mosquitoes.

Hundreds of Navy employees will do without one day’s salary once a week for 11 weeks. These are just some of the tentacles of federal budgets cuts also known as sequestration.

While the summer begins on Friday and these have finally started.