March 12, 2013
One of the first causalities of the the federal Sequester is the Tuition Assistance (TA) program provided by the Army and Marine Corps. Following the Marines Corps lead, the Army announced on Friday, March 8th that soldiers will not be allowed to enroll in TA-funded courses after the day of the annoucement. The Marines announced on… Read More
March 12, 2013
Senator Mikulski (D-MD), Senate Appropriations Chair, has released the Senate version of the continuing resolution for FY 2013. HHS and Education programs will continue to be funded at the FY 2012 levels minus the 5 percent cut as mandated by the March 1st OMB report and sequester order. There are a few interesting sections in… Read More
March 11, 2013
The Senate will take action on a continuing resolution (CR) this week to fund federal government through the end of FY 2013. The current CR expires on March 27th. The Senate bill expands on the House version that was approved in that chamber last week, which combines new Defense and Military Construction-VA bills with a… Read More
March 9, 2013
President Obama will release his FY 2014 budget on April 8th, more than two months late. Under the law, the President must submit a budget by the first Monday in February. Congressional sources said last week that they had been told the budget was coming on March 25th, meaning the new April 8th release date… Read More
March 7, 2013
Yesterday the House approved a six-month continuing resolution (CR) to fund federal government past March 27th when the current CR expires. The bill would shift billions of dollars to military operations to help the Army and Navy cope with automatic spending cuts ordered by the sequester last week. The measure now moves to the Senate,… Read More
March 6, 2013
Federal government is closed today due to an approaching snow storm in the Washington, DC area. It is currently snowing heavily and sideways outside my window, but it is wet snow and doesn’t appear to be sticking much yet. The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm warning through 3:00am Thursday morning, and the… Read More
March 2, 2013
Late last night, President Obama issued the order mandating sequester cuts across the federal government. Here is the order and link to the Office of Management and Budget’s report to Congress: SEQUESTRATION ORDER FOR FISCAL YEAR 2013 PURSUANT TO SECTION 251A OF THE BALANCED BUDGET AND EMERGENCY DEFICIT CONTROL ACT, AS AMENDED By the authority vested in… Read More
March 1, 2013
Sequestration officially starts today around midnight, though Obama could issue the order sooner that will direct federal agencies to make cuts of about 9 percent for most nondefense discretionary programs and 13 percent for defense programs. This represents $85 million is spending cuts over the remaining seven months of FY 2013. If kept in full,… Read More
February 28, 2013
As predicted, the Senate rejected a Republican bill giving President Obama broad discretion to implement $85.3 billion in spending cuts — or sequester — over the remainder of FY 2013. The proposal failed 38 to 62. Senate Democrats also fell short of the 60 votes needed to move ahead with their own plan to forestall automatic… Read More
February 28, 2013
The Sequester is scheduled to take effect tomorrow, March 1st. There are some efforts to delay, modify, or turn off the sequester but none of those proposals have sufficient support to move through the legislative process at this point. A policy brief on this topic will be sent to the UW community today. That said,… Read More
