Federal Daily News
Senior executives caution supercommittee
The Senior Executive Association has come out with yet another communication from feds against the massive budget-cutting that most observers feel is going to come out of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, better known as the supercommittee.
SEA's President Carol A. Bonosaro and General Counsel William L. Bransford authored the letter, and in cautioning against what is threatening to become willy-nilly budget and staffing cuts, the pair cited the questionable efficiencies of many of the cuts made in the National Performance Review carried out by the Clinton Administration in the 1990s. "Although the stated goal was to shrink the government and increase efficiency, the measures taken under the National Performance Review often had the opposite effect," the letter said.
"[We] would like to sound a note of caution should you choose to consider the proposals submitted by members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee," the SEA letter said. "Proposals to freeze federal salaries or cut the federal workforce (which are, on their face, easy decisions given the anti‐federal employee climate) fail to take into account the larger picture of how they negatively affect government operations and potentially raise costs in the long run."
"We encourage you not to use federal employees as the quick way out of the budget hole," the letter said.