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Budget Cuts’ Impact May Be Difficult to See Right Away
Across-the-Board Cuts Take Effect, but Their Impact Is Not Immediately Felt
(35 minutes later)
WASHINGTON — Seventeen months after President Obama signed doomsday budget legislation that was never intended to become law, the sweeping spending reductions in the measure have been imposed.
WASHINGTON — University officials, city managers, day care providers and others spent Saturday assessing how they would absorb their part of the across-the-board cuts in federal spending that began taking effect over the weekend.
Late Friday night, Mr. Obama formally triggered spending cuts that will reach across the breadth of the federal government after he failed to persuade Congressional Republicans to replace them with a mix of cuts and tax increases.
But even as the institutions that depend on federal money nervously took stock, most Americans were largely unaffected by the cuts, at least for now. At Los Angeles International Airport, John Konopka, 45, suffered no delays as he arrived from Atlanta.
In a 70-page report to Congress accompanying the order and detailing the reductions — agency by agency and program by program — Jeffrey D. Zients, Mr. Obama’s budget director, called them “deeply destructive to national security, domestic investments and core government functions.”
“This is just another travel day,” Mr. Konopka said. “I think all of it’s been talked up a bit, way too politically, to make it seem a lot worse than it is. I don’t think it’s going to be the gloom and doom that some people are saying it would be.”
But even as the cuts become official, some of the immediate impact is difficult to see.
Others were less sanguine. Joel Silver, 63, a retiree from the Bronx, said he feared the cuts would affect the most vulnerable. He said he was angry that President Obama and lawmakers had not prevented what he called “an invented crisis.”
The process of trimming government budgets is slow and cumbersome, involving lengthy notifications to unions about temporary furloughs, reductions in overtime pay and cuts in grant financing to state and local programs. Less federal money will, over time, mean fewer government contracts with private companies. Reduced overtime for airport security checkpoint officers will make lines longer, eventually.
“What’s the point of a Congress?” he asked. “Aren’t they supposed to sit down and talk about things and figure them out? The economy was just recovering and now it’s going to slide back.”
And so as the first weekend began for the new, slimmer government, little of that is evident yet.
Across the country, the impact of sequestration, as the cuts are known, appeared to be as varied as the thousands of federal programs, big and small, that now have shrunken pots of money from which to draw.
Letters to governors, informing them of the smaller grants are beginning to go out, officials said. Shaun Donovan, the secretary of housing and urban development, wrote to Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio: “You can expect reductions totaling approximately $35 million,” helpfully putting the amount in a bold type.
In Baltimore, the mayor called for an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss the reductions in federal money and their impact on a city that already has a projected deficit of $750 million over the next decade.
The Air Force Thunderbirds — the elite team of F-16 pilots who perform tricks at air shows — announced on its Web site that all of its shows have been canceled starting April 1. The last show will be in Titusville, Fla., on March 23.
At research universities, administrators sent e-mails to faculty members and students warning that changes were coming. Samuel L. Stanley Jr., the president of Stony Brook University, said the institution would lose $7.6 million in “vital federal funding” for research grants and other programs. The University of California, Berkeley, warned that “as sequestration translates into fewer federal grants, the campus will be forced to hire fewer researchers.”
Still, it will take some time, officials acknowledged, before the cuts begin to make life more difficult for teachers, defense contractors, Head Start students, border patrol agents or others who rely on the largess of the federal government.
The Air Force Thunderbirds, the elite team of F-16 pilots who perform flight maneuvers at air shows around the country, announced on their Web site that all of their shows had been canceled starting April 1.
Emerging from an Oval Office meeting on Friday with the lawmakers, the president called the cuts “just dumb.” He said they would slow the economic recovery and spoke emotionally about their impact on people who would feel the consequences of government layoffs and disruptions in public services.
Federal officials began sending letters to governors, informing them of smaller grants. Shaun Donovan, the secretary of housing and urban development, wrote to Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio, “You can expect reductions totaling approximately $35 million.”
“I don’t anticipate a huge financial crisis, but people are going to be hurt,” Mr. Obama said during a 35-minute news conference at the White House, in which he acknowledged that his campaign of highlighting fallout from the cuts had failed to persuade Republicans to consider tax increases as part of a package to avert the $85 billion in reductions over the next seven months.
In a 70-page report to Congress accompanying the sequestration order and detailing the reductions — agency by agency and program by program — Jeffrey D. Zients, Mr. Obama’s budget director, called them “deeply destructive to national security, domestic investments and core government functions.”
But the president and his Republican adversaries said they would not carry the fight over the cuts into a coming legislative effort to finance the government through Sept. 30, essentially declaring a cease-fire in the budget wars that have dominated Washington since 2011.
Among the $85 billion in cuts for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30: $3 million less for Pacific coastal salmon recovery; $148 million less for the patent office; a $1 million cut in support by the Defense Department for international sporting competitions; $289 million less for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a $1 million cut in the Interior Department’s helium fund; and $16 million less for the Sept. 11 victim compensation fund.
The showdown in December over the so-called fiscal cliff yielded $620 billion in tax increases over 10 years. The across-the-board spending cuts now going into force will cut deficits an additional $1.2 trillion.
But even as the reductions became official, the result of a stalemate between Mr. Obama and Congressional Republicans over increasing taxes, some of the immediate impact was difficult to see.
Both sides indicated that for now, that may be enough — a fiscal peace through political exhaustion. The two parties are now expected to move to a broader argument over the right level of taxes and spending as they seek to develop a new budget for the coming year and beyond. Republicans said they welcomed a return to a more orderly budget process but warned they would not give in on their basic principles.
The process of trimming government budgets is slow and cumbersome, involving notifications to unions about temporary furloughs, reductions in overtime pay and cuts in grant financing to state and local programs. Less federal money will, over time, mean fewer government contracts with private companies. Reduced overtime pay for airport security checkpoint officers will make lines longer, eventually.
“I will not be part of any back-room deal, and I will absolutely not agree to increase taxes,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.
And so as the first weekend began for the new, slimmer government, little of that was evident yet.
After a public relations blitz lasting weeks that was aimed at stopping the cuts, Mr. Obama said he was prepared to extend a stopgap law that finances the government to March 27 if Republicans stuck to an agreement worked out in 2011 about the level of federal spending. The decision will most likely allow the across-the-board spending reductions to remain in place for months if not years.
At Kennedy International Airport in New York, travelers who arrived extra early were greeted by short lines, not the drastic delays that federal transportation officials have said could emerge as security officers are furloughed to save money.
White House officials and Senate Democrats had considered making one last stand around the March 27 deadline, declaring the Senate would not pass another government spending plan unless it undid the across-the-board cuts. But Senate Democrats were leery. The first furloughs are likely to hit in April, and the Democrats feared that little political pressure would have built on Republicans before the current stopgap spending law expired.
“The check-in was fine, at least for now. I’m surprised,” said Chris Achilefu, 45, who arrived at the airport four hours before his flight to Lagos, Nigeria. Normally Mr. Achilefu, an automotive exporter who lives in Upper Darby, Pa., would arrive two hours early, but he said he was concerned about lines.
In his weekly address on Saturday morning, the president acknowledged that the reductions would not affect everyone equally.
“I was listening to what the president said yesterday, that it won’t kick in right away,” he said. “Hopefully the two parties will come together, hopefully they will resolve it before another month.”
“While not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away, the pain will be real,” Mr. Obama said. “Many middle-class families will have their lives disrupted in a significant way.”
At the main San Ysidro port of entry between Mexico and San Diego, traffic moved smoothly late Friday night, just hours after the sequestration began, and border lines had only a few dozen vehicles in each lane.
And heading into the weekend, some officials seemed eager to offer reassurance that government would continue to function despite the deep cuts.
Vendors who line the street where cars sometimes idle for hours waiting to enter the United States perked up when they heard about the cuts.
While Leon E. Panetta, who just left the job of defense secretary, had thundered about the critical risk to national security — and lamented what he viewed as a shift of Washington’s political class away from good governance — his successor, Chuck Hagel, spoke in more conciliatory terms.
“That’s good for business,” said Emilio Gomez, an employee at a stand selling rugs, china figurines and soda. “When people are waiting, they get bored and they buy more stuff.”
To be sure, Mr. Hagel listed the specific risks to national security that could arrive with the cuts, also called the sequester. But even as he noted that the United States “has the best fighting force, the most capable fighting force, the most powerful fighting force in the world,” he pledged that he and the Joint Chiefs of Staff “will manage these issues.”
In his weekly address on Saturday, Mr. Obama acknowledged that not everyone would be affected equally. “While not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away, the pain will be real,” he said. “Many middle-class families will have their lives disrupted in a significant way.”
“These are adjustments,” Mr. Hagel said of the cuts to be imposed by the cuts. “We anticipated these kinds of realities, and we will do what we need to do to assure the capabilities of our forces.”
In the Republican response to Mr. Obama’s address, Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, also called the cuts “devastating,” but said that Republicans in the House would not yield on taxes. “Spending is the problem, which means cutting spending is the solution,” she said. “It’s that simple.”
Mr. Obama has signaled that he remains eager to replace across-the-board cuts with deficit reduction that consists of more targeted reductions and increased revenue from closing tax loopholes. An e-mail sent late Friday to supporters from his former campaign operation had the subject line “Devastating.”
Reporting
was contributed by Robbie Brown from Atlanta; Will Carless from San Ysidro, Calif.; Ian Lovett from Los Angeles; and Marc Santora and Ravi Somaiya from New York.
“Congress can stop all of this right away — and pursue a balanced approach to deficit reduction,” wrote Jon Carson, the president of Organizing for Action, the political operation created to advance the president’s agenda. “That’s what the vast majority of Americans want.”
But Mr. Obama, too, said in his address on Saturday that it was time to move on to other topics.
“I’m going to push through this paralysis and keep fighting for the real challenges facing middle-class families,” he said, citing efforts to increase the minimum wage, provide money for more preschool for children and pass an immigration overhaul.
In the Republican radio response, Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington State, the chairwoman of the Republican conference, also called the cuts “devastating” to America, but said that Republicans in the House would not yield on the issue of taxes.
“Spending is the problem, which means cutting spending is the solution,” she said. “It’s that simple.”
In fact, nothing about the sequestration law is simple. And the 70-page report on its implementation proves that point. The report calculates how much each program will lose, “as required by sections 251A(7)(A) and 253(f)(2) of BBEDCA.” Those numbers are detailed in page after page of complex tables.
In his letter, Mr. Zients called the law establishing the cuts “a blunt and indiscriminate instrument. It was never intended to be implemented and does not represent a responsible way for our nation to achieve deficit reduction.”
