The effects of the so-called sequestration budget cuts on the federal government are revealed in a Jan. 25 memo to National Park Service staff written by Park Service Director Jon Jarvis.
The memo, obtained by the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, instructs park superintendents to begin making cuts immediately to meet the $110 million target for the agency that has a $2.2 billion annual budget. The National Park Service, like most federal agencies, has already cut its budget by 6 percent over the last two years since Congress nearly shut the government down in 2011, when House Republicans used the debt ceiling to hold Democrats hostage.
The sequestration cuts will go into effect March 1 if Congress is unable to cut a deal, which is expected to have an especially hard impact on Idaho which gets far more federal funds than it pays out in taxes.
I did several stories last year based on an analysis by The Economist that showed from 1990 to 2009, the federal government spent $148.4 billion in Idaho. That was money for roads, schools, Mountain Home Air Force Base, the Idaho National Laboratory, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, Social Security payments, farm subsidies, food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, federal housing grants, economic development grants, fish and wildlife management, tribal health programs, federal employee salaries and benefits, and more.
During the same 20 years, the federal government collected $124.3 billion in taxes from Idahoans. That left the state with a $24.1 billion windfall that contributed to its $53.7 billion gross domestic product in 2009.
The Park Service is looking at the elimination of season employees and extended furloughs for permanent employees. The Department of Defense already began doing the same thing last fall and its impact on the GDP was so great that the economy actually got smaller in the last quarter of 2012.
In Idaho, the Park Service impact will be in small towns like Arco and Hagerman, Lapwai and Ashton near national parks. But Defense and Energy Department cuts will cast a pall on all of Idaho’s economy like an ice storm. However, the sequester specifically left entitlement programs like Medicare untouched.
Go Rocky! Don’t let your political views get in the way of any semblance of objectivity. Don’t let grammar and spelling get in the way of your tendency to put as little effort as possible in to your writing.
“The Department of Defense already began doing the same think last fall and its impact on the the GDP was so great that the economic actually got smaller in the last quarter of 2012.”
Do you get paid for this? I counted 4 errors in that one sentence. Spelling, usage, and grammar matter. At a certain point, one loses all credibility.
Dinglebees, why don’t you shove you irrelevant comments up your arse (apparently I don”t spell any better than Rocky!)
IN the words of Dan Popkey, “such sloppiness with the English language is beneath the office and sets a bad example”
IN real news:
Meanwhile, government spending, which has been a drag on growth for more than two years, declined for the ninth time in 10 quarters. Gross domestic product—the broadest measure of goods and services churned out by the economy—fell at a 0.1% annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to the government’s initial estimate out Wednesday.
The biggest cuts came in military spending, which tumbled at a rate of 22.2%, the largest drop since 1972. But state and local spending also fell, dashing hopes of stabilization after a rare increase in the third quarter. – wsj.com