Today is deadline day for the sequester, the automatic budget cuts of $85 billion that will hit the Pentagon and federal agencies. The sequester becomes official today when President Obama will be required by law to issue a sequestration order by 11:59 p.m. tonight. Meanwhile, Congress yesterday abandoned efforts to avert the sequester and left Washington.
President Obama and a group of congressional leaders, including Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) met this morning for less than an hour, but, as expected, did not reach any kind of last-ditch sequester deal. Top congressional Democrats Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and Vice President Joe Biden, attended the White House meeting.
President Obama placed blame squarely on Republican lawmakers at a press conference today. Republicans, for their part, said the fault was the president’s for insisting that increased taxes be part of the deal.
The meeting today follows Senate Republican and Democrats blocking each others’ competing sequester plans yesterday. A Democratic proposal to replace the sequester with a combination of spending cuts; a 30-percent tax on incomes greater than $5 million, a phased-in surtax for households with incomes between $1 million and $5 million; and provisions aimed at closing tax loopholes, fell on a procedural vote 51-49, failing to garner the 60 votes needed to avoid a GOP filibuster. Not a single Senate Republican broke ranks to support the Democratic proposal.
A Republican alternative to give the Obama administration more flexibility on where to cut spending while blocking any new tax increases, failed on a 38-62 procedural vote, with nine Republican senators joining the Democrats to defeat it.
The House of Representatives made no recent attempt to stop the sequester.
Meanwhile, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said in a Reuters TV interview on Wednesday that furloughs of meat inspectors, and the cascading impact to the meat industry, was unavoidable, but that USDA would work to minimize the impact on consumers and the meat industry. It will depend, Vilsack said, on “how many days we have to furlough and how we stagger those days.” The White House has said USDA would have to furlough its 8,400 inspectors for the equivalent of 15 days to compile the savings required under the sequester. However those furlough days could be structured in a number of ways to minimize the impact. “We’ve done the math in many ways as we can and any scenario requires furloughs of inspectors,” Courtney Rowe, a USDA spokesperson said. However, the timing of the furloughs remain uncertain, Rowe said.
By law, USDA must provide federal inspection in meat, poultry, and egg products plants. During past budgetary impasses, these inspectors have always been deemed essential. However, even in the scenarios being widely discussed, inspector services would not be affected until likely June. All FSIS employees must be given at least 30 days written notice of furlough; all FSIS bargaining unit employees have the rights to an oral conference with the agency administration prior to furlough; and FSIS is mandated to engage in negotiations with the agency’s bargaining unit prior to implementing furloughs.
Attention on Capitol Hill is now turning to a continuing resolution (CR) that is necessary to fund the government and keep it operating. Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY) plans to formally introduce his CR on Monday, which would fund the federal government after a current stopgap act expires on March 27 and would reflect $1.043 trillion in federal spending that Congress earlier agreed to. However, it is likely that the measure will state that the total is subject to the automatic cuts forced by sequester, taking the total funding down to about $974 billion. Rogers also indicated that he is attaching to the CR two of the unfinished 2013 spending bills–Defense and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs.
However, Senate Appropriations Chairman Barbara Milukski (D-MD) said she intends to move an omnibus, expanding the scope of the CR from two to 12 fiscal year 2013 appropriations bills. This would be a far broader measure than the House’s planned package. “I will have an omnibus, and we will be ready to go” when the House sends the CR to the Senate,” Mikulski said.
