Study: DoD Sequestration Cuts Would Slam Federal Workforce, Delay Pain to Contractors

Civilian layoffs would come gradually

While the military personnel accounts that pay for uniformed personnel are completely off-limits from the sequestration cuts, money available to pay the salaries of civilian employees would decline by 13.7 percent, Harrison said. Unlike the cuts to contracts, those layoffs and furloughs would not come gradually.

“It would happen nearly immediately within the days and weeks after sequestration occurs,” Harrison said. “And the longer they wait, the more people they’ll have to lay off.”

Depending on how DoD manages the cuts, Harrison said that won’t necessarily mean 108,000 pink slips. In theory, the Pentagon could choose to reduce work hours for some or all of its workforce to achieve the 13.5 percent cut.

In jobs that do get eliminated, DoD would have some tricky reshuffling to do.

“It’s not like you have extra money to hire contractors to do these jobs,” he said. “Since the uniformed military is not getting cut, it might mean they get brought in to do some job functions that the civilian workforce used to do. It could also mean reduced oversight. In the past few years, DoD has made a priority of building up the acquisition workforce, and this would hit them as well. They might move people around and change job assignments. I don’t know, that should be part of their sequestration planning.”

Even though DoD has insisted so far that it’s not doing any sequestration planning, Harrison said it would be wise for them to start, via a possible loophole that would let DoD make cuts more intelligently: He said previously- enacted laws the Budget Control Act relies on for the mechanics of sequestration could give the department flexibility to avoid the indiscriminate cuts via a one- off request to Congress that would allow it to shuffle funds among the department’s various programs, projects and activities.

If Congress said yes, money from lower priority items could go to higher priority spending.

“They could start doing that planning, he said. It would be smart,” said Harrison, adding he takes DoD officials at their word that no preparations have started so far. “The downside to doing that kind of planning though is that once you show people that there are higher-priority items and lower-priority items in the budget, the lower-priority items are going to get cut no matter what. That’s why they’re not showing their hand right now.”