There are no budget cuts. Sequestration involves a reduction of less than 10% in the rate of increase in federal spending. It is not costing DoD or anyone else any money they already had. It is being used as an excuse to get low-information voters worked up.
For the DoD this is indeed a serious issue. Not insurmountable, not “will cause the DoD to fall”, but an issue that will resound for a while and will have impacts at various levels for years to come. No, it is not the “meat clever” some talking heads would have you believe, but it is important.
While what you say might be true under some circumstances, remember the DoD has been working under continuing resolutions for the last 3+ years. This is a complicated matter that means, among many other things, that each year the “budget” (or lack there of) that has been released for expenditure has come later and later, producing an “inch worm” affect. Last year, for example, many line items in the budget did not get funded until March, half way through the FY. And often they were already funded at lower levels than originally planned. I did not say lower levels, less funding, I said lower than originally planned levels.
What this means is that for the last several years portions of the DoD have been working at reduced funding levels for the early part of each FY, then getting funding and trying to “catch up” during the later part of the FY, after the budget cap is raised. In many instances this has resulted in programmatic slips, and program slips always cost more money, resulting in higher projected cost and planned budgets for “next year”.
You say that “it is not costing the DoD or anyone else any money that they already had”, that may be true to some extent, but because of the continuing resolutions and the budget uncertainty for the early part of the year the money they “already had” has been impacted. I can say, with 100% certainty, that at the working level budgets are impacted and reduced. Less funding power (as opposed to raw dollars) is available for spares, maintenance, and labor. Why that is, how the math all works, I can’t tell you, I have no idea.
What will be impacted by the sequester, as far as DoD spending, is largely discretionary spending. This is, among other things, purchasing (appropriations) and facilities money. So military personnel will be paid at last years levels +, the basics of maintenance will be paid at last years levels +, but purchasing (including spares purchasing) and facilities maintenance will be reduced by about 8% across DoD. Not the “increase” will be reduced by 8%, but rather the planned spending, projected spending based on projected costs in support of operations, will be reduced by about 8%. This means 8% less funding available for purchasing and facilities than was planned. In many cases, because of past spending and existing investment, the “purchasing” part of this will take the smaller hit, and the facilities will take the larger.
Since this thread is concerning aircraft and demonstration units I will use aircraft examples, but it can be expanded to any field of endeavor. The facilities issue is the one that impacts readiness the most. So the budget to maintain an aircraft (except for spare parts) is secure, the budget for the military personnel to maintain the aircraft is secure (but not the budget for civilian personnel, contractor or government), however the budget to maintain the airfield is not secure. Units will end up, locally, diverting funding (mostly from maintenance funding) for “mission critical” and “safety of flight” purposes to cover the facilities and to keep key civilian personnel on the job (once lost some skill sets are very slow to be regained).
The fact of the matter is that if things continue as currently planned many people within DoD (and other government agencies, just using DoD as an example here) will face furloughs. These furloughs will impact readiness. Individual units will be required to “do more with less”, specifically less funding than planned. Maintenance funding will be indirectly impacted, but impacted all the same. Appropriations and procurement actions already in place and well mature will face unexpected, and unpredictable, cost increases unless someone decides to terminate them and live with the loss of investment to date. If furloughs do not happen, and the planned reductions stay in place, then maintenance funding will be even further affected.
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