Sequester Looms

Well, it's coming.  Sequestration.  It's a strange word in this context.  -- why do we call this process sequestration, anyway?  Let's call it what it is: budget cutting.  85-billion dollars of government-inflicted across the board budget cuts — which will take effect at the end of this week — unless Congress can work out a deal, which nobody expects will happen.

If they take affect, the budget cuts will hit Massachusetts in a variety of ways.  According to the White House, they will result in about 7-thousand civilian defense workers being furloughed in the state.  The NIH would have to slash hundreds of grants — and stop or delay scientific research projects.  Locally, the federal cuts would hit everything from aviation security to education to veterans services.

Scott Kirsner, columnist at the Boston Globe.

Linda Bilmes, Daniel Patrick Moynihan senior lecturer in public policy at Harvard University. She served as assistant secretary of commerce during the Clinton administration.

The White House released this breakdown of cuts that will directly impact Massachusetts.

Boston Globe "Massachusetts will lose more than 60,000 jobs, much of it in the defense industry, and $127 million in federal research funding, harming a critical sector of the state economy, if Congress allows across-the-board spending cuts to go into effect in March, according to a report released Friday by Representative Edward Markey of Malden."

WBUR "With the nation hurtling toward yet another key fiscal deadline, defense contractors, research hospitals and social services providers are among those in the New England region sounding the alarm over looming federal spending cuts...While states with larger military bases and defense installations may suffer more direct and immediate consequences from sequestration, New England is a hotbed for defense-related manufacturing and research by numerous private companies."

Boston Herald "Education and the military would take among the biggest hits in Massachusetts from automatic cuts to the federal budget set to take hold this week, according to a report the White House issued Sunday as it seeks to avoid the impending economic fallout."