Last month the co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform issued a preliminary report that proposed cutting defense budgets (including some specific recommendations for cuts), freezing federal civilian pay and military noncombat pay for three years, and reducing total federal civilian employment by 200,000. That report captured the interest of many deficit hawks and drew much criticism from federal employment groups and military analysts. This week the Commission presented its final report and some of those preliminary recommendations were gone. The final report does not recommend any military pay freeze and makes no recommendations for specific program cuts to the DoD budget. It does, however, recommend that both security-related and non security-related budgets be held at the 2011 levels in 2012 and that budgets be reduced to the 2008 level, in real terms, by 2013. The three-year federal civilian pay freeze (including DoD civilians) is retained from the early report. The final report recommends that civilian employment levels be cut by 200,000 through attrition, by replacing only two workers for every three that leave federal service. The report recommends cutting federal budget costs for travel to 80 percent of the FY2010 level and reducing the federal vehicle budget, except for DoD and the Postal Service, by 20 percent. The report is not biding on the Administration or the Congress, but the president is expected to adopt many of its proposals in his FY2012 budget request.
Deficit panel’s final report drops noncombat military pay freeze, but would freeze federal civilian pay and cut federal workforce
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The pay freeze should be limited to senior DoD employees, GS-14 and above. Reserve travel should be drastically reduced. Stop conference travel, Invitational Travel Authorizations and routine TDY’s. Stop all IMA travel. If the civilian workforce can be reduced, there should be no need for IMA travel to backfill the active duty force. The civilian workforce can provide backfill. If travel can be reduced by 80 percent, stop all active duty conference travel as well. Also, limit “site visits” by both the active duty and reserve forces.
The Commission will be releasing an addendum this week or next with “illustrative cuts” (the same language as in the earlier draft) to the security silo. We have been told there are little change to those cuts affecting DoD, but perhaps some additions. Military pay and health care reform may well be among these illustrative cuts.
[…] one worker to be hired for every three workers that leave federal service. The “National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform,” called for cutting the federal workf…by 200,000 by replacing two workers for every three that leave federal […]