WASTE IN GOVERNMENT? NO WAY!
Sequestration Horrors Oversold: Every Major Agency Found Enough Waste to Reduce Furloughs...
Most major departments have reduced, or eliminated altogether, original furlough projections.
The earliest examples came from departments that told Congress they would have to furlough employees, but ended up backtracking. The Education and Justice departments fall into this category. The Agriculture, Transportation, and Homeland Security departments all received authority to transfer funds between agency accounts, and were therefore able to cancel planned furloughs. The Commerce Department promised furloughs at its National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, only to cancel them in May.
The most significant example of agency furloughs has come from the Defense Department. The Pentagon originally planned to furlough all 750,000 civilians for 22 days. It then used reprogramming to trim that number to 11 days, and more recently -- through a series of cost-cutting measures and inter-service transfer of funds -- reduced the days of unpaid leave to six. The furloughs are now estimated to affect about 650,000 Defense civilians.
Several agencies have relied on “internal reviews” of their financial conditions, during which they discovered cost-cutting measures had made their situations less dire than originally anticipated. This, in turn, allowed them to cut required furlough days.
For those of us who really care about helping the poor, remember:
Every dollar lost to government waste and fraud is just one more starving child living in the gutter.
Edited by Rogerdodger, 13 August 2013 - 06:18 PM.
