Showing posts with label government. Show all posts
Showing posts with label government. Show all posts

Saturday, October 19

A 8 years partial Government shutdown?

| By Brianna Ebrahimi, Eric Pianin, the fiscal times

Sequestration is hardly the debt reduced. It exacerbated fiscal problems affect structure, national security and hinder the economic recovery.

Not long ago, the nation was pierced by $85 billion, looming, linear cuts of in public spending that President Obama and many others would predicted tank the economy, undermine defense and forcing drastic cutbacks of government programs and staff.

This automatic cuts or storage, are still chipping way spending on defense and national programmes with the Government, but they have a first largely by the Government shutdown and the threat of the shadow by default on the U.S. debt.

Widespread furloughs of Federal Republic forced workers to shut down the cuts, contracts required billions of dollars in reductions in Department of defense weapons and strong reduction of e government services and programs, to average Americans. The on State-funded programs assigned as lead, meals on wheels and residential consulting all the bite of sequestration have felt.

First announced last month, Department of health and human services provides for the head start program, that provides services such as meals, transportation, and medical care to low-income, preschool aged children, services for more than 57,000 children had cut. The $8 billion-budget for head start could already be reduced by 5.27 percent, and it will absorb probably even more cuts if the second wave of the seizure becomes effective.

Higher during the cuts hardships for the poor earn less than $30,000 points in said 74 percent of Americans who recently from the United Technologies/National Congress connection survey surveyed journal, they sequester no effect of cutbacks have noticed, which entered into force in March.

They sequester was while the designed negotiations of the 2011 debt ceiling as a poison pill, which would be nobody thought, ever take effect. The idea was that mindless, linear cuts would be so unattractive that Washington lawmakers motivated by new and to replace less disturbing reductions. The goal of the 2011 budget control Act was about $2.5 trillion savings over the next decade by meeting strict spending caps to reach, which would gradually narrow the budget.

But as a "super Committee" by House and Senate Republican and democratic leaders following failed, on about 1.5 trillion $ total savings some began last March the first installment of the automatic cuts occur.

The early reviews of the impact of freshmen of this automatic cuts are very mixed. Many conservative opponents once sequestration now are programs because of its negative impact on defense because of his forced savings sing his praises.

There is some evidence that sequester the discipline reign as the only real budget in Washington. Entire federal spending fall from a high of $3.6 trillion in the fiscal year 2011 to an estimated $3.45 trillion in the fiscal year 2013, which ends on June 30. If no recession and the compliance with the caps, continue federal spending as a share of the economy in the later this year of the Obama Presidency shrink.

"It's off is the best political influence Republicans have a concession by Democrats win - on Obamacare or anything else," conservative editorial page of the Wall Street Journal wrote recently. "Even tighter spending caps on domestic spending are the Liberal constituencies that squeeze life by the Government. Because planned parenthood and welfare and other transfer payments squeezed get, increased the political pressure on Democrats something tangible in return for the loosening of caps give up.

The Federal Government tightened the belt in the amount of $85.5 billion in the year, the end of September 30, and cut an additional $100 billion in the coming year, unless to blunt Republican and Democratic votes, or affecting sequester the as part of a larger budget to end the Government shutdown and debt crisis.

Friday, October 4

13 ways a government shutdown could hurt you

13 ways a government shutdown could hurt you
| By Maureen Mackey, The Fiscal Times

If a shutdown does occur this time around, it would inconvenience the public in ways large and small. Consider the impacts of the shutdown in 1995.

As the possibility of a government shutdown moves into sharper focus with each passing hour, all eyes are on the ways it could hurt everyday Americans.

Back in 1995, when funding for the government expired, non-essential services came to a halt. National parks and museums were closed; passport processing was delayed. Even the National Weather Service cut back on its regular reports.

But in coordination with the Office of Management and Budget, the president has broad discretion over what departments and agencies should be kept open, making it difficult to quantify exactly how much it would cost the government -- and how it would affect the public -- if a shutdown were to happen.

"Although a government shutdown would be disruptive, the impact will depend on the duration and the degree, on how tight or loose the exceptions are," Patrick O'Keefe, director of economic research at J. H. Cohn and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary in the U.S. Department of Labor, said in 2011, when another shutdown loomed. "But the bigger impact is its demonstration of political impasse regarding the country's unsustainable fiscal posture... The financial market implications of such an impasse should not be underestimated."

"I don't think there is a full appreciation of the impact of a shutdown on the bottom line of government," said Max Stier, president and CEO at the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan think tank. "Most agencies are ill prepared for the disruption."

A significant majority of Washington budget and policy experts surveyed by The Fiscal Times in 2011 said they expected a government shutdown of at least a few days after the latest stop-gap spending measure expires. (A shutdown was narrowly avoided that year.)

If a shutdown does occur this time around, it would inconvenience the public in ways large and small. Consider some of the impacts of the three-week shutdown back in 1995-1996 -- all of which could be repeated this time around:

1. New patients were no longer accepted into clinical research at the National Institutes of Health. In addition, NIH disease hotlines and CDC disease surveillance were stopped.

2. Work on more than 3,500 bankruptcy cases in the federal court system was suspended.

3. Hundreds of thousands of "non-essential" federal workers were furloughed for three weeks, from mid-December 1995 to early January of 1996. (Some of those workers eventually received back pay for their missed days.)

4. Of $18 billion in Washington, D.C., area federal contracts, $3.7 billion (over 20%) were affected adversely by the funding lapse.

5. Some 368 National Park Service sites closed -- a loss of 7 million visitors. The National Park Service administers 84.4 million acres of federal land in 49 states and other federal territories.

6. National museums and monuments closed, including the Smithsonian and other government buildings, with an estimated loss of about 2 million visitors.

7. Over 600 toxic waste dump sites went untended and uncleaned during the last shutdown. Some 2,400 Superfund employees did not work.

8. The recruiting and testing of new law enforcement officials -- including 400 Border Patrol agents -- were suspended.

9. During the last shutdown, 20,000 to 30,000 applications for visas by foreigners went unprocessed each day, along with 200,000 applications for U.S. passports. Airlines also suffered: Many prospective travelers were unable to fly.

10. The Department of Veterans Affairs had to cut many of its services, including health care, welfare, travel, and finance; the department could not process compensation claims.

11. The shutdown in 1995 meant a delay in processing alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and explosives applications by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF).

12. The National Weather Service did not produce its regular reports during the 1995-1996 shutdown.

13. New Social Security claims were not processed because the agency furloughed over 61,000 employees. As the shutdown continued, the agency regrouped, recalling workers to start processing new claims again.

It's clear that government shutdowns can be nasty business: They've required the cessation or the reduction of government activities and affected all sectors of the economy, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was one of the architects of the 1995 government shutdown which lasted 21 days. It was settled when President Clinton submitted a budget that proposed to eliminate the federal deficit in seven years, according to Time magazine.

The issues that were presented then and ultimately triggered the 1995 shutdown were the same as in 2011 and eerily similar to 2013 as well. June O'Neill, who was CBO director in 1995, says that Congress couldn't agree on a budget resolution for the coming year and was haggling over whether to raise the debt ceiling in 2011. The economy was also recovering from the 1991 recession and growth was sluggish, which is also similar to today. "There was a great deal of posturing then as there is now," O'Neill recalled in 2011. "The world would come to an end if the debt ceiling wasn't raised."

But in 1995, it was more about Gingrich proving he was just as powerful as the Clinton administration, she said.

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