sequestration
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The Maryland Democrat fielded questions from National Institutes of Health employees at a town-hall meeting at the agency's Bethesda headquarters.
April 02, 2015 -
Even if Congress finally finds a way around sequestration, the drawdown plan the Army has already laid out would take it down to a size of 450,000 soliders within the next five years. Officials said they won't be able to shed 40,000 personnel just through attrition. As Federal News Radio's Jared Serbu reports, the Army is expected to involuntarily separate at least 14,000 more soldiers, and thousands more if the budget caps stay in effect.
March 25, 2015 -
The Democrats' plan, introduced by House Budget Committee Ranking Member Chris Van Hollen, would further change the Budget Control Act to allow agencies more financial flexibility. Unlike the Republican plan to restore normalized funding to the Defense Department while continuing to scale back domestic programs, the Democrats want to restore funding for both defense and non-defense agencies.
March 23, 2015 -
Pentagon officials are adamant that sequestration-level spending is incompatible with the current Defense strategy. But, they also have serious concerns with the plan House Republicans released this week to boost Defense funding, saying it would limit their options and keep the military in a state of budget uncertainty.
March 20, 2015 -
The Defense Business Board outlines three approaches for the Pentagon to save $125 billion across six administrative areas. Defense Deputy Secretary Bob Work said the 90-day study will help his department improve productivity as sequestration looms.
March 18, 2015 -
House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) released his $3.8 trillion budget plan, which includes language calling for an increase to federal employees' contributions to their retirement plans. All federal employees would pay 6.6 percent of their pay into their retirement plans. The bill also increases funding to the Defense Department's Overseas Contingency Operations fund, while keeping total DoD spending under sequestration caps.
March 17, 2015 -
The military already has shown it can improve services on bases through public-private partnerships. As budgets shrink, the next task is to partner with local governments.
March 11, 2015 -
Ken Gold, director of the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University, will give his thoughts on some of the issues that Congress will be addressing over the next few months. March 9, 2015
March 09, 2015 -
After two years of operating under sequestration level funding, the Army now faces a $3 billion maintenance backlog and 5,500 work orders, said Katherine Hammack, assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment.
March 05, 2015 -
Ashton Carter, the new Defense secretary, told lawmakers this week that most of DoD's civilian workforce is performing mission-critical functions. But large budgets over the past decade have let the department do a lot of hiring without much thought toward cutting outdated positions, he said.
March 05, 2015 -
By ERICA WERNER and DAVID ESPO Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Bitterly admitting defeat, the Republican-controlled Congress sent legislation to President Barack Obama on Tuesday that funds the Department of Homeland Security without any of…
March 04, 2015 -
Nearly a quarter of the military's facilities are rated as in "poor" condition; another 7 percent are failing. Officials say their 2016 budget would begin to dig out of billions of dollars in backlogged maintenance needs.
March 04, 2015 -
Some would argue that Republicans and Democrats in Congress make it a habit of torturing each other. But Senior Correspondent Mike Causey knows that they're really there to torture us.
March 03, 2015 -
The Pentagon's been warning for years that the decade-long budget caps Congress set in place four years ago won't work. At least if DoD hopes to execute the defense strategy on the books right now. With sequestration set to return this year, officials say they'll try to make things a bit less abstract…and publish a report that details exactly what would happen to individual bases and weapons systems with a 30 billion dollar cut. Federal News Radio's Jared Serbu joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive to discuss DoD's sequestration messaging strategy as part of this week's edition of Inside the Reporter's Notebook.
February 24, 2015 -
After having gotten a partial, two-year reprieve from sequestration, the original caps Congress set for the Defense Department in the Budget Control Act (BCA) are scheduled to go back into effect in October.
February 23, 2015