Pentagon notifies Congress of likely furloughs

Sec­re­tary of State John Kerry ges­tures as he deliv­ers his first for­eign pol­icy speech Wednes­day in Old Cabel Hall at the Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia in Char­lottesville, Va. Kerry said the great­est chal­lenge to U.S. for­eign pol­icy is not emerg­ing China or Mid­dle East insta­bil­ity — it’s Con­gress. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Steve Helber)

ROBERT BURNS

AP National Secu­rity Writer

WASHINGTON — Defense Sec­re­tary Leon Panetta told Con­gress on Wednes­day that if auto­matic gov­ern­ment spend­ing cuts kick in on March 1 he may have to shorten the work­week for the “vast major­ity” of the Defense Department’s 800,000 civil­ian workers.

They would lose one day of work per week, or 20 per­cent of their pay, for up to 22 weeks, prob­a­bly start­ing in late April.

To dis­pel the notion that this is mainly a prob­lem for the nation’s cap­i­tal, the Pentagon’s bud­get chief, Robert Hale, told reporters that the eco­nomic impact would be felt nation­wide. The biggest poten­tial losses, in term of total civil­ian pay­roll dol­lars, would be in Vir­ginia, Cal­i­for­nia, Mary­land, Texas and Geor­gia, accord­ing to fig­ures pro­vided by the Pentagon.

Hale said the unpaid leaves for civil­ian work­ers would begin in late April and would save $4 bil­lion to $5 bil­lion if extended through the end of the bud­get year, Sept. 30. That is only a frac­tion of the $46 bil­lion the Pen­ta­gon would have to cut this bud­get year unless a deficit-reduction deal is reached.

Panetta also said the across-the-board spend­ing reduc­tions would “put us on a path toward a hol­low force,” mean­ing a mil­i­tary inca­pable of ful­fill­ing all of its missions.

In a writ­ten mes­sage to employ­ees, Panetta said that he noti­fied mem­bers of Con­gress Wednes­day that if the White House and Con­gress can­not strike a deficit reduc­tion deal before March 1 to avoid the fur­loughs, all affected work­ers will get at least 30 days’ advance notice.

“In the event of seques­tra­tion we will do every­thing we can to be able to con­tinue to per­form our core mis­sion of pro­vid­ing for the secu­rity of the United States, but there is no mis­tak­ing that the rigid nature of the cuts forced upon this depart­ment, and their scale, will result in a seri­ous ero­sion of readi­ness across the force,” Panetta wrote.

Adding his voice to the bud­get debate, Sec­re­tary of State John Kerry said the fis­cal impasse is a seri­ous threat to Amer­i­can cred­i­bil­ity around the world.

“Think about it: It is hard to tell the lead­er­ship of any num­ber of coun­tries that they have to resolve their eco­nomic issues if we don’t resolve our own,” Kerry said Wednes­day at the Uni­ver­sity of Virginia.

House Speaker John Boehner put the blame on Obama and said he agrees with Panetta that auto­matic spend­ing cuts would dev­as­tate the military.

Boehner released a copy of Panetta’s let­ter for­mally noti­fy­ing Con­gress that the Pen­ta­gon will have to con­sider fur­lough­ing a large por­tion of its civil­ian work­force if seques­tra­tion kicks in.

“The fur­loughs con­tem­plated by this notice will do real harm to our national secu­rity,” Panetta wrote in his con­gres­sional noti­fi­ca­tion let­ter, adding that it would make troops less ready for com­bat and slow the acqui­si­tion of impor­tant weapons.

“Over­all, seques­tra­tion will put us on a path toward a hol­low force and inflict seri­ous dam­age on our national secu­rity,” Panetta wrote.

Panetta was fly­ing Wednes­day to Brus­sels to attend a NATO defense min­is­ters meet­ing. Spokesman George Lit­tle told reporters en route that Panetta would tell his coun­ter­parts that across-the-board bud­get cuts will hurt not only the U.S. mil­i­tary but also the abil­ity of NATO to respond to crises.

Lit­tle said the Pen­ta­gon is also dis­cussing the pos­si­bil­ity of not being able to send mil­i­tary units on planned rota­tions to var­i­ous places around the world. In antic­i­pa­tion of cuts, the Pen­ta­gon has already decided not to send one air­craft car­rier back to the Per­sian Gulf, reduc­ing the U.S. pres­ence there to one carrier.

The Pen­ta­gon has begun dis­cussing details of the fur­loughs with defense worker union officials.

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama has exempted mil­i­tary per­son­nel from furloughs.

Obama was con­tin­u­ing to pres­sure Repub­li­can law­mak­ers to avert the auto­matic cuts by sup­port­ing a Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­tic plan that would replace the imme­di­ate cuts with a mix of spend­ing reduc­tions and tax increases. He was con­duct­ing inter­views with local tele­vi­sion in eight mar­kets: Boston, Charleston, S.C., Bal­ti­more, Okla­homa City, Okla., Wichita, Kan., San Anto­nio, Texas, San Fran­cisco, and Honolulu.

“I don’t know why it is in this town folks leave stuff to the last minute. You know, there’s no other pro­fes­sion, no other indus­try, where peo­ple wait until the 11th hour to solve these big prob­lems,” Obama told WJZ, the CBS affil­i­ate in Baltimore.

The only civil­ian Pen­ta­gon work­ers who would be exempt from fur­loughs would be Senate-confirmed polit­i­cal appointees such as the defense sec­re­tary and deputy defense sec­re­tary, as well as a rel­a­tively small num­ber of work­ers deemed essen­tial to pro­tect the safety of defense prop­erty and personnel.

Panetta said the admin­is­tra­tion is still work­ing with Con­gress to avoid auto­matic bud­get cuts by reach­ing agree­ment on a deficit reduc­tion plan.

Posted by AP News on Feb 20 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.