The Pentagon did not “comprehensively” document or evaluate best practices in implementing more than $37 billion in sequester cuts in fiscal 2013, according to a new government watchdog report.
In March 2013, more than $85 billion in automatic cuts across the government were implemented due to a 2011 budget deal. More than a third of the cuts targeted the Pentagon, which had to reduce its spending by 7 percent.
The Government Accountability Organization (GAO) reviewed the Pentagon’s implementation of the cuts and found that any efforts to document or review the department’s best practices were “limited in scope” and “not widely shared.”
“DOD is missing an opportunity to gain institutional knowledge that would facilitate future decision making about budgetary reductions,” GAO said in the 126-page report.
{mosads}The GAO points out that the automatic cuts could hit again next year if Congress appropriates more than budget caps allow under the 2011 law.
In the review, it found that the 2013 Pentagon cuts resulted in canceled training exercises and delays in equipment maintenance as well as increased costs for certain programs. Some of the longer-term effects, however, are difficult to determine and “may not be known for years,” the GAO said.
To mitigate the effect of the cuts, the Pentagon drew on funding from previous years and also relied on the ability to reprogram and transfer funding between accounts, the GAO said.
Defense officials prioritized funding for programs meant for military readiness and wartime operations overseas and also exempted workers at childcare centers from a furlough.
Last November, the Office of Management and Budget updated a guidance to agencies that instructs them to record their decisions about the implementation of sequestration. The new guidance, however, came well after the cuts took effect.
Lawmakers in Congress, meanwhile, are pushing for another budget deal, similar to one struck in late 2013 that would increase sequestration budget caps for at least fiscal 2016, which begins Oct. 1.