Anyone else affected by the Sequestration/ Furlough?

[DottieHarley]

Congress gets way too much esp when you consider THEY ARENT DOING THEIR JOBS.
The federal government hasn't had a budget in HOW LONG? In a for-profit company those people would be out on their behinds.
I think the cuts are being done so carelessly. I could cut 20 percent from my dept by losing useless people... But nooooo, we will just give everyone a cut bc that's easier. There's GOT to be a better way.

[Queen_Celeste]

I can see why they decided to cut everything everywhere by 7%. It will make everyone complain but no one will have to lose their jobs (and lets face it losing jobs will make the administration look BAD). Do I think its right that they can just give themselves raises while cutting everything else by 7% no. If everything is being cut by 7% so should their salaries/budgets.

As for pensions and retirements, the rumor that the US Senate and House get salaries for life is not true. They just have a really good pension program. Our state's pension program for all state employees (including teachers) is similar. If someone worked for the state for 30+ years their pension at retirement, plus social security benefits, would be similar to their wage as an employee. But public sector jobs never pay as well as private sector. My husband salary range for his job if he were a state employee would be $48-58K. A comparable private sector job would make $55-65K. And the wages wouldn't increase as quickly as private sector because they are set by law and promotions are pretty non-existent. But, the other benefits like health insurance and costs are much less expensive as a state or federal employee than private sector. So there are pros and cons for everyone.

Our state did not give any employees raises over the last few years. Period. The only way you could hope to get a raise was if you are a teacher and you got your masters degree, then your job title would change so you could be in a different wage bracket. My husband's private sector job was the same, only at the same time the cost for health benefits tripled. Then they laid off employees at his location to hire people elsewhere at lower wages. We would have been far happier with a small cut in wages than what happened. Yes it will suck to make less and I am not trying to make light of your situation, but things could be worse. Hopefully this is only temporary and not a sign of things still to come.

[vatblack]

We don't know yet.

[pinktoes]

Private sector gets hurt too by cuts. Insurance keeps going up, raises are non existent. Hours are getting cut.
Would you rather have a pay cut or furlough days? Or get laid off? Consider when you vote, and what companies you support with their lobbyists influencing their pet projects.
stock market is doing great, unemployment is down. Someone is making money. Just not the lower or middle class.

[ulawolf]

Originally Posted by Lady_B Makes me so mad that the military is getting crapped on. My husband has served 3 combat deployments and suffers from PTSD and paranoia from being deployed. Give me a break Obama and maybe use the $400k you get paid a year to pay for your trips to Hawaii yourself. I find it funny ppl who voted for Obama are all pissed off now. I'm like don't complain to me I voted for Romney.

Part of this problem is the republicans. They also refused to come up with any compromises. I am not saying democrats aren't part of the problem but imo this is a government as a whole not one side or the other

[kanga1622]

We don't know yet how it will affect us. DH has been told by his director that their federal funding will be cut and they will be able to accept fewer kids throughout the district into low-income preschool. At this point we don't know if that means cutting one of the smaller district programs entirely or small cuts to several programs. Hopefully his job will not change or his hours cut.

Our health insurance is also risky right now as we have been informed there is a deficit in the insurance pool right now so we don't know what that means for premiums and deductibles for the coming fiscal year.

We don't have a lot of room in our budget so we hope things don't get too crazy or at least the insurance changes don't outpace the small raise we get as state employees. Of course, we just finally got raises last year after three years of wage freezes so we hope that doesn't happen again as well.

Sent from my iPod touch using DS Forum

[kocho]

Not sure how we will be affected just yet. But I am sure it is coming.

[kimb96]

My husband has had a week of furlough for the past 3 years. Except he is salaried and in upper management and ends up working anyway. That ticks me off.

I'm honestly glad the sequestration went through. Congress has failed to even come up with a budget for the past 2 or 3 years. There is so much division in congress that there is no way they will agree on any budget cuts. So it came down to the mandatory 2.5% across the board. I don't like how the government has gone about the cuts. There is no doubt in my mind they can find 2.5% in waste and cut it out without affecting too much. I believe they are choosing to cut in a way to actually hurt people in an effort to make it seem much worse than it is.

I'm pretty fed up with all of congress and I'd like to fire all of them.

[ulawolf]

Originally Posted by kimb96 My husband has had a week of furlough for the past 3 years. Except he is salaried and in upper management and ends up working anyway. That ticks me off. I'm honestly glad the sequestration went through. Congress has failed to even come up with a budget for the past 2 or 3 years. There is so much division in congress that there is no way they will agree on any budget cuts. So it came down to the mandatory 2.5% across the board. I don't like how the government has gone about the cuts. There is no doubt in my mind they can find 2.5% in waste and cut it out without affecting too much. I believe they are choosing to cut in a way to actually hurt people in an effort to make it seem much worse than it is. I'm pretty fed up with all of congress and I'd like to fire all of them.

Yep

[DottieHarley]

Originally Posted by pinktoes Private sector gets hurt too by cuts... stock market is doing great, unemployment is down. Someone is making money. Just not the lower or middle class.

Yup. Our area has lots of govt and govt contract workers, so when they all feel the pain, so does everyone else bc they have less to spend. It's going to drag down the whole economy of our area in a pretty bad way, I think.