The 10 Years' War: Army Plans For Sequestration Cuts Through 2022

[unhappycamper]

http://defense.aol.com/2013/02/22/army-sequestration-cut-through-2022/



The 10 Years' War: Army Plans For Sequestration Cuts Through 2022
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Published: February 22, 2013

FORT LAUDERDALE: As automatic cuts to the 2013 budget look increasingly unavoidable, with the deadline for a Congressional deal only a week away, Army leaders are preparing fallback positions to defend the service from a full decade of sequester cuts. That includes new guidance on cutting modernization and planning for potential cuts to personnel and combat brigades.

"Sequestration is not just FY '13," said Lt. Gen. James Barclay, the deputy chief of staff for resources (G-8) on the Army staff, in remarks to the Association of the US Army's winter conference. "We have nine more years of sequestration facing us unless the act is changed."

The Balanced Budget Act of 2011 called for a trillion in federal spending cuts -- half from defense, half from discretionary non-defense programs, and effectively zero from entitlements -- over a decade. The first year's cuts would apply automatically and in equal proportions, 8.8 percent, to every Pentagon account except military payroll, which is exempt. For 2014 through 2022, however, Congress and the Administration can allocate the cuts however they want.

Until this year, the Administration resolutely refused to plan for how to implement even the 2013 impacts. President Barack Obama declared during the campaign that sequestration "will not happen." Now, however, the gridlock looks so intractable and the prospects so bleak that the Army, at least, is preparing to pick and choose which of its babies it has to kill over the next yen years.



unhappycamper comment: Stop bitching about a five fucking percent budget cut, Dudes.