By Suzanne Kubota
Senior Internet Editor
FederalNewsRadio.com

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” as the saying goes, and as budgets fall, cost reductions will need to rise across the federal government.

The Department of Health and Human Services, for example, is looking for cuts program by program and bracing for a double-digit budget cut. If enough cuts can’t be found, reports Federal News Radio’s Executive Editor Jason Miller, Denise Wells, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Resources and Chief Human Capital Officer, says furloughs at the Centers of Disease Control are an option.

At a panel discussion entitled “Managing to Do More with Less” at the Senior Executives Association Career Leadership Conference, Wells said the furloughs were discussed last week in a meeting with CDC. Each day of furloughs could save the agency $182,000.

Richard Holgate, Assistant Director for Science & Technology, Chief Information Officer at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says ATF has to find $80 million in cuts. With a hiring freeze already in place at ATF, Holgate said downsizing by 500 to 700 positions has the bureau starting to consider buyouts and early retirements.

For more about the panel discussion, see “Managing to do more with less” under the SEA Conference 2011 coverage, and to read the tweets from Jason Miller from the panel, see “Live updates from SEA Conference 2011“.

(Copyright 2011 by FederalNewsRadio.com. All Rights Reserved.)

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