Sequestered affects way over blown - what happened in 1986 "

[4248]

United States General Accounting Office Washington, D.C. 20548 Human Resources Division


B-2406 11August 3,199OThe Honorable Leon Panetta Chairman, Committee on the Budget House of Representatives Dear Mr. Chairman:This fact sheet is one of a series responding to your request for us to study the effects of the fiscal year 1990 sequester at selected agencies. It presents information regarding the Department of Education. The study’s objectives were to identify (1) how resources were reduced by the sequester and (2) what impact the sequester had on the Department’s ability to fulfill its mission and on those served by its programs.
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The Department of Education sequestered appropriations for activities Were Sequestered in Proportion to Their Appropriations within budget accounts proportionally.

Examples of Department of Education activities are the chapter 1 program’s basic and concentration grants in the Compensatory Education for the Disadvantaged account. Using this methodology, the Department generally reduced the activities within a sequestered account by the same percentage as the reduction against the total account.

For example, activities within the Compensatory Education for the Disadvantaged account, which included chapter 1 and migrant education programs, were reduced by 1.2 percent, as was the total account.
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Even with the sequester’s $266.1 million reduction, the Department’s budget authority increased from $23 billion in fiscal year 1989 to $24.2 billion in fiscal year 1990-an increase of 6.1 percent.

The impact was also less severe because many of the Department’s programs are forward-funded.

For forward-funded programs, such as Pell grants and chapter 1 grants, funds are appropriated at the start of the fiscal year; however, the Department may not award or disburse funds until several months later for use into the next fiscal year.
This allowed the Department and state and local education agencies time to make adjustments with minimal disruption to the programs. In addition, the Department was not mandated to take any other across the- board reductions in its fiscal year 1990 appropriations to comply with other legislation.

The Department’s Program Administration account, however, absorbed a $4.3 million pay increase, which reduced funds available for administrative activities throughout the agency.

Although the sequester reduced fiscal year 1990 appropriations for the Department’s largest grant programs, total appropriations for the programs exceeded prior year levels.
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So then as now the affects were totally overblown - yet those (tax payers) who receive public benefit from the programs were deprived - while Administrators and tax funded employees were the true benefactors.

Politics as usual !

[Yankeefan2009]

Nah-uh, Obama told me that the sequestered cuts would be real bad and he can't use his Jedi mind tricks on the Republicans to save the people.