Sunday, March 3, 2013

Sequestration Does Not Mean the Sky is Falling



After digging deeper into the sequester, I found several issues in my earlier post that may have been inaccurate.  Mostly I was looking at an obsolete OMB report on the sequester that had $109 billion in sequestration funds for 2013.  The American Taxpayer Relief Act reduced the 2013 effects of sequester by $24 billion leading to the much reported $85 billion.  Regardless, I am still trying to square the DOD discretionary funding with the caps in the budget control act.  Because of this, I took down the earlier post and will update it and republish soon.  There is no point in having incorrect data out there.  The effects of trimming $85 billion from a $3,200 billion budget is still negligible but the details of these posts should be accurate.

There are actually three OMB (Office of Management and Budget) documents that clarify or muddy this issue.

The first one is undated and was published sometime in 2011, I think.  It is the least clear:

The next one, published last September, outlines a different scenario and suggests only a modest impact to the budget.  http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/legislative_reports/sequestration/sequestration_update_august2012.pdf

The final one was published by OMB last Friday:  http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/legislative_reports/fy13ombjcsequestrationreport.pdf

All of these OMB memos and reports are even more obtuse than the law enacting the sequester itself.  The OMB reports, especially the first one , give a deeper insight to the budget process.  View the law at:  http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-112publ25/pdf/PLAW-112publ25.pdf.

The defense budget for 2013 is still at:  http://comptroller.defense.gov/defbudget/fy2013/FY13_Green_Book.pdf

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