Some encouraging news for nearly a thousand civilian military workers at Dover Air Force Base: Air Force officials this week said furloughs won’t be part of making ends meet for the next fiscal year.
Roughly 650,000 civilian Defense Department employees nationwide were forced to take 6 unpaid days off this summer due to Congressionally-mandated spending cuts known as sequestration.
[audio:http://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/mooreint.mp3|titles= WDDE All Things Considered host Joseph Leahy's interview with DAFB commander Col. Rick Moore.]
But Dover Air Force Base Commander Colonel Rick Moore cautions that completely ruling out furloughs is dependent on Congress passing a budget within the first six months of fiscal year 2014.
He says if Congress, instead, passes a continuing resolution, then the Air Force cuts could be even worse.
“The Secretary of Defense has come on line and said that if sequestration continues into ‘14, we will almost surely have to have a reduction in force, which is, in the civilian personnel system the same thing as a layoff,” Col. Moore told WDDE.
And Moore adds, regardless of what Congress does, the base will face some final issues that need to be addressed.
““We deferred almost $900,000 worth of expenses to FY 14 with the hope that we’d be able to take care of those things in FY 14 that we weren’t able to in ‘13," said Col. Moorse. "In the event that sequestration continues into ‘14, not only will that be the case, but we’ll have to find an additional amount of money to pull out of our budget for FY 14.”.”
The federal budget sequester began in March and calls for $85 billion in short-term cuts across all federal agencies with half coming out of the Pentagon budget.
