Congress created a budget rule perceived so odious, congressmen wouldn’t let it go into effect.
That was 1985.
The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation governing the congressional budget process for 28 years, butted up against the modern Congress where bipartisan budget deals are hard to come by.
And Friday comes sequestration and its spending cuts that touch virtually every corner of the federal government and into state and local governments where much of that spending goes. That is, unless President Barack Obama, Senate Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives reach an agreement beforehand.
Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., who is up for reelection in 2014, held a conference call with statewide reporters Tuesday to discuss her stance on the issue. She’s looking at the process through the lens of cuts to defense and military readiness, and said she hopes to work out a deal with fellow senators on the matter.
“I am truly troubled by the sense of inevitability among members of Congress that this sequestration is just going to take effect,” Hagan said. “And I am just as frustrated with the people I talk to at home that the partisan bickering has brought us to this point of where we are today.
“Reducing the national debt is one of my top priorities, but these indiscriminate, unprioritized cuts that are being put on the backs of our service members, I do not believe is the way to get our fiscal house in order.”
Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., said spending needed to be cut, but there should be a better way to go about the process.
“I would prefer more prioritized cuts that would address real waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending, but this plan was crafted by the President and rather than indicating he will work with Congress to avoid sequestration, he is moving the goal posts by now asking for a tax-hike as well,” Burr said.
Though the penalty was put into play in 1985, Congress never seriously played chicken with sequestration until the debt ceiling negotiations in 2011. A deal without sequestration was in the works between Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner that year. However, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., in his profile by Ryan Lizza in the March 4 edition of The New Yorker, says he talked Boehner out of the agreement.
“As Obama waited by the phone for a response from the Speaker, Cantor struck,” Lizza wrote. “Cantor told me that it was a ‘fair assessment’ that he talked Boehner out of accepting Obama’s deal. He said he told Boehner that it would be better, instead, to take the issues of taxes and spending to the voters and ‘have it out’ with the Democrats in the election.”
Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., said he voted against the 2011 agreement that included sequestration because of the deep military funding cuts, but says a deal would be ready right now except for the failure to act by Senate Democrats.
“I have cosponsored multiple bills to replace the sequester with alternative cuts,” Jones said. “We cannot continue to grow the government and kick the can down the road. We could completely replace sequestration by pulling out of Afghanistan right now and putting an end to the $235 million a day that we’re spending over there. We could end foreign aid, cut the federal Department of Education, repeal Obamacare.”
Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., voted against the 2011 budget plan as well, and takes a position similar to Hagan’s in that he wants to stop the cuts from going into effect by putting together a new agreement soon.
“Our national security, jobs, education, health care, and transportation will all be negatively impacted when this measure goes into effect,” McIntyre said. “We must work together to find a bi-partisan solution to address this immediate issue.”
Kinston City Manager Tony Sears said the city should experience much in the way of funding problems, but Lenoir County agencies would feel the pinch.
“Typically, the county would have more involvement at the federal level than the city would, and that would be because of social services,” Sears said. “If there’s a service or a funding source that would be impacted by the sequestration, I am unaware of it at this time.”
At the Lenoir County Department of Social Services, Director Susan Moore said last year the agency received more than $100 million in federal dollars, though 25 percent of that went to entitlements that would be untouched by sequestration, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid.
“But, other programs would be (impacted), like the incentives we receive for collection efforts in child support, (and) child care subsidy funding that we provide help to pay for daycare to low-income working parents,” Moore said. “We get funding from the Social Security Act, and its Title IV (Part) E, and we also get extra money. The IV-E money won’t be cut, but some of the other child services funds would be cut. Those are the ones that have been identified for us right off the top.”
Moore noted 20 percent of the department’s federal dollars go to the daycare program.
The Kinston Housing Authority receives all of its funding from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, so its entire budget is in the air. KHA Executive Director Rhonda Abbott said the agency could lose $165,000-$170,000 in Section 8 funding, $20,000 earmarked for staff, $150,000 exclusively for public housing and $50,000 from a capital fund.
“We’re just trying to be conservative with our spending, at far as public housing, and not to do things that are not absolutely necessary,” Abbott said, “For example, when we have vacant units, we have been going in and putting in new tile flooring and new kitchen cabinets, things like that, we will stop doing until we’re sure of what the financial situation’s going to be. And then on the voucher side, basically we’re not issuing new vouchers right now, because we are not sure we will have funding for any new vouchers.”
The KHA hasn’t issued a new housing voucher since Jan. 1, and Abbott said she hopes they don’t have to take away an existing voucher in the future.
For Lenoir County Schools, Superintendent Steve Mazingo said he isn’t sure what the impact will be on the school system. Not enough information has filtered down, but the district, its students, faculty and staff aren’t in immediate financial peril.
“We have very little information on what it’s going to be for us,” Mazingo said. “What we know, officially, is it will not affect our budget this year. That means it will not affect us through June 30. Of course it will affect some of our federal programs — we know it will not affect child nutrition, we’ve been told that — but we’ve been told a rough estimate of maybe 8-10 percent on our Title I funds.
“That, of course, helps our disadvantaged students and our disadvantaged schools. Also, in terms of our federal funding for exceptional children, there’s a possible 8-10 percent cut there. But then, we hear other numbers.”
But one thing is for certain. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the air traffic control facility at the North Carolina Global TransPark would be closed, along with similar facilities in New Bern, Concord, Hickory and Winston-Salem.
Planes would, however, continue flying in and out of these airports.
Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 or wes.wolfe@kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @WolfeReports.