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 Easy E wrote:
Is the Angry Weiner Dog Shake of Death like the Harlem Shake?

For those of you in government, has your bosses told you when you can expect to see the "windfall" of Sequestration take effect?

I am lucky enough that my agency (the FTC) planned WELL in advance and will not be suffering from furloughs or RIFs.

My father works for DoD. His department (and many others) are taking an effective 20% pay cut. They have had to cancel many contracts, so many contractors will probably end up getting laid off.

My mother works for DoJ. All of DoJ aside from law enforcement groups are taking an effective 10% pay cut. Like DoD, many of their contracts are being canceled or allowed to run out, costing more contractors their jobs.

That's all I know about first hand. I suspect other agencies are going to end up feeling a pinch similar to DoJ.


I suppose a certain irony in the "cut it all" thought is how much money we waste by cutting, and how much gets wasted in order to fuel big business.


Medicare. We all know Medicare spending is growing out of control, right? After all, we have a large aging population and more and more people are ending up on medicare and living longer. So why then is medicare wasting $50 billion a year on prescriptions? Because insurance companies were so worried about losing money they lobbied, successfully, to remove Medicare's ability to negotiate prescription prices. We have only 5% of medicare claims audited, which leads to rampant waste and fraud but do we hire more auditers? Hahaha of course not. We cut government staff so more and more money is wasted every year.

Whatever. People have fallen for the 'ER MER GERD! LOOK AT THAT DEFICIT!" garbage and now we can't get any actual, sensible reforms through.

How are they taking a 10% or 20% cut when their department cuts are substantially less?

Just wait until the real cuts come.

 Frazzled wrote:
How are they taking a 10% or 20% cut when their department cuts are substantially less?

Just wait until the real cuts come.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. DoD has been told they will be furloughed 1 day a week. That is one day a week with no pay, that doesn't count towards retirement or benefits. They lose 20% of their salary for that week, with no option to make up the day. Similarly, DoJ is taking 1 day per pay period (2 weeks). No pay, no leave gained, no 401k contribution, doesn't count towards retirement, etc. etc. That is just pay.

 Frazzled wrote:
How are they taking a 10% or 20% cut when their department cuts are substantially less?

Just wait until the real cuts come.

If a department has a bunch of things that literally can't be cut, that is, things that are already contracted and can't be gotten out of, then the cuts have to be lumped into a smaller portion of the overall budget, like one particular office or payroll in general.

 Rented Tritium wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
How are they taking a 10% or 20% cut when their department cuts are substantially less?

Just wait until the real cuts come.

If a department has a bunch of things that literally can't be cut, that is, things that are already contracted and can't be gotten out of, then the cuts have to be lumped into a smaller portion of the overall budget, like one particular office or payroll in general.

Got it.

For those who are part of the Government...

Thank you for your service.

 Frazzled wrote:
How are they taking a 10% or 20% cut when their department cuts are substantially less?

I think another problem is that a 10% (as an example) cut in fiscal spending is hitting partially through the fiscal year. So let's say that a department is halfway through the year, and has been spending at 100%, now they are told that they have 10% less to spend this year. That means that they already spend part of it they will need to cut spending by 20% for the second half to spend the right amount for the whole year.

At least I think so .

We (Department of Veterans Affairs) are exempt so far, since our money gets allocated in a weird way. From what I have been told the VA got hit hard with the government shutdown during the Clinton years, along with everybody else. Since kicking sick veterans out of the hospital and not sending pension checks to guys who lost their legs in World War 2 is the kind of bad PR that even congress wants to avoid they passed a law that our funding gets allocated a year further out than everybody else so that a crisis like this doesn't affect our day-to-day operations in an unexpected way. So for us the sequester goes into effect next fiscal year, if it doesn't get repealed before that.

Or at least that is how it was explained to me.

Furlough days also have different meanings to people in different situations,.

I'm single guy with no kids, no mortgage, a roommate, and three months worth of net pay in the bank. If we had furloughs, I'd cut back on eating out and dip into savings a bit, but I'd be fine.

Other workers are supporting unemployed spouses, children, grandchildren, paying a mortgage, and generally living paycheck to paycheck. It's gonna hurt them a lot more than It'll hurt me.

But, my office is odd in that there are few people with just a bachelors. Lots of the legal assistants and other staff have just a high school diploma, while all the attorney's and judges have JDs. It's an unfair stereotype, but my friends in managment confirm that it's not the lawyers that fail to plan ahead.

That's another thing, even if we get furlough days (which would be dumb since we don't even have enough staff to work right now, so it would seem that they should just cut positions from the budget that have never been filled) I just pick up the phone and pick up an extra day at another hospital and make more than I would have made at my regular job.

Easy enough for nurses, but our unit clerks/house keepers/maintenance guys/etc won't have it that easy.

 Rented Tritium wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
How are they taking a 10% or 20% cut when their department cuts are substantially less?

Just wait until the real cuts come.

If a department has a bunch of things that literally can't be cut, that is, things that are already contracted and can't be gotten out of, then the cuts have to be lumped into a smaller portion of the overall budget, like one particular office or payroll in general.

For example, if your department has a 10 year lease on its office building, it can't cut that. It might be possible to sub-let the building and move somewhere cheaper, though this would of course incur legal and relocation costs.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Rented Tritium wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
How are they taking a 10% or 20% cut when their department cuts are substantially less?

Just wait until the real cuts come.

If a department has a bunch of things that literally can't be cut, that is, things that are already contracted and can't be gotten out of, then the cuts have to be lumped into a smaller portion of the overall budget, like one particular office or payroll in general.

For example, if your department has a 10 year lease on its office building, it can't cut that. It might be possible to sub-let the building and move somewhere cheaper, though this would of course incur legal and relocation costs.

Actually it probably could be. Its the government. They just don't want to.

 d-usa wrote:
That's another thing, even if we get furlough days (which would be dumb since we don't even have enough staff to work right now, so it would seem that they should just cut positions from the budget that have never been filled) I just pick up the phone and pick up an extra day at another hospital and make more than I would have made at my regular job.

Easy enough for nurses, but our unit clerks/house keepers/maintenance guys/etc won't have it that easy.

Lucky. We've been reminded that all outside work still needs to be approved ahead of time. Watching one guy try, it's just not worth it.

 d-usa wrote:
That's another thing, even if we get furlough days (which would be dumb since we don't even have enough staff to work right now, so it would seem that they should just cut positions from the budget that have never been filled)

I know in our agency (a part of DOJ), generally speaking, if you remove a position from the budget, it will take an act of God to get it back. And it's very hard to fill positions in my agency, because they all require a background check to get clearance. So even after you select a candidate, they may have already found another job by the time the background check clears, and then you have to start the hiring process all over again. It took three years to finally fill one position in one group (me) because of that constant cycle.

And, was anybody else irritated like hell when they read that some congressional staffers got BONUSES?

And the word came down today that there will be no overtime for the foreseeable future (expected) and no comp time, either (unexpected).

the whole Congress just got a raise. I think we could cut half of their $70 million pay allowance without much issue.