The Defense Department's announcement that it can reduce civilian furloughs will be welcome news to those who have been forced to cut 20 percent of their pay since July, but could prompt a nightmare situation further down the road/.../
Experts in defense policy warn that the leeway the Pentagon was able to afford its civilian workers now may come at a dire cost in the coming years.
"The problem here is before sequestration took effect, they had all these dire warnings," says Todd Harrison, a budget expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "One by one, it's proving not to be true."
Defense leaders initially warned Congress that allowing sequestration to begin on March 1 – per the regulations outlined in the 2011 Budget Control Act – would amount to at least 22 furlough days for civilians as well as wide-sweeping hits to military readiness. These threats ranged from an inability to deter nuclear weapons to the forced cancellation of aircraft carrier group deployments.
Tuesday's decision, along with the other waning effects of the budget cuts, will assure some members of Congress that sequestration is not all that bad, says Harrison.
"It exacerbates the credibility problem that DoD and the administration have with Congress," he says.