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Federal Daily News

GOP continuing resolution keeps sequester cuts, extends pay freeze


House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) on March 4 introduced a continuing resolution to fund government operations until the end of fiscal 2013. While the CR preserves sequester cuts across most of the government, it also includes exceptions for items such as military pay, veterans affairs, and national security.

The bill (H.R. 933) also includes two other bills that provide a full year of defense and military construction/veterans affairs appropriations. An outline of the bill on the committee's website noted that those two bills passed the House last year and have been negotiated by both the House and Senate.

The defense bill includes $127.5 billion for military personnel and pay that is exempted from sequestration, including a 1.7 percent pay raise for the military. The military construction/veterans affairs bill includes $133.9 billion in discretionary and mandatory funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs, all of which is exempt from sequestration.

The CR also contains exceptions aimed at preserving national security, including provisions to allow Customs and Border Protection and the FBI to maintain current staffing levels, and to provide additional funding for federal prisons, wildfire suppression and new weather satellites, among other things. The bill also contains a provision to extend the civilian pay freeze, the committee said.

The remainder of the continuing resolution holds most other funding at last year’s levels, subject to sequestration cuts.

“The legislation will avoid a government shutdown on March 27th, prioritize DOD and veterans programs, and allow the Pentagon some leeway to do its best with the funding it has,” Rogers said in a statement. "This bill will fund essential federal programs and services, help maintain our national security, and take a potential shutdown off the table.”

According to the committee, the bill "brings top-line overall rate of spending in the CR down to the sequestration level of approximately $982 billion."


 

Reader comments

Thu, Mar 7, 2013

Just remember to fire your elected officials...we vote again in less than to years. If we elect the same idiots, we will get the same result. THEY NEED FIRED!

Thu, Mar 7, 2013

it's uncontionable federal DOD civilians have had their pay frozen for two plus years and are now being asked to sustain a third year of frozen pay AND to take a - on average - $6,000 cut in pay while their miliary counterparts have been given raises every year for the past two years and are now being given ANOTHER 1.7% raise. Don't fool yourself into thinking Military Members are low paid. They get free housing/utilities/medical (all income with is NON TAXABLE) while still making on average more than $40,000/year. This means they make at least equal to the civilian counterparts but puts them in a tax bracket which is significantly lower. They also only need 20 years of service to receive a LIFETIME retirement with LIFETIME medical benefits...Their civilian counterparts ... they wont work less than 30 to get their retirement...

Thu, Mar 7, 2013

"The entire department will see a loss in productivity and general moral"_______________ You do realize the full sequestration takes the DoD back to 2006 funding levels??? Was the department not productive and had low moral then?

Wed, Mar 6, 2013 Billy Mid-America

Because the politicians foolishly waste our tax dollars, to cure the budget deficit and due to the Sequestration THEY allowed to happen, they now want to furlough me for up to 22 days, which amounts to a 20% pay cut, reduce my OT, I still don’t have the uniform allowance I should have received last October, plus my salary has been frozen for 2 years now it looks like it will be 3 or even 4 years and yet here is the one of the real problems that the politicians won’t address…


As federal officials hunt for line items ripe for budget-cutting, they might want to consult the nearly 17,000 recommendations made – and disregarded – in reports issued in 2012 by inspectors general across the government.
According to a new report from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the number of open and unimplemented recommendations made in various IG reports skyrocketed to an all-time high. In 2009, IGs reported 10,894 open and unimplemented recommendations; that number jumped to 16,906 in 2012.
If implemented, the recommendations could save taxpayers $67 billion, the report stated. Committee staff who prepared the report also noted that the figures are conservative estimates and the total likely is significantly higher.
"As Congress and the administration work to identify new ways to save money, they would be well-served by implementing the recommendations of the IG community," the report noted. "If evidence continues to mount that the administration is dismissive of the work of the IG community, Congress should aggressively incorporate unimplemented recommendations into legislative actions."

The operative word in that last sentence is “should” which needs to be changed to MUST. Makes me wanna puke!

Wed, Mar 6, 2013 slw Mississippi 39466

I didn't see any mention of Federal Employee Retire pay. Will it be preserved, or reduced under CR or sequestration? I had read earlier that such pay was exempt from sequestration.

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