Do you have ‘Sequestration Anxiety?’

By Jack Moore
Federal News Radio

The picture of what federal agencies might look like after sequestration — the automatic budget cuts enacted because the supercommittee failed to come up deficit-cutting plan — takes a bite out of the budget isn’t pretty.

Furloughs, layoffs, more buyouts and shrinking pay and benefits. Those have all heightened the awareness of “Sequestration Anxiety,” Tom Shoop, the editor-in-chief of Government Executive magazine, said.

That’s also the name of a new poll on the GovExec website, which queries users on whether they think Congress will modify the automatic cuts or undo them altogether as well as what information agencies have disseminated about possible across-the-board cuts.

Shoop characterized sequestration as an “everybody loses” scenario and said it’s not unlikely that Congress could, eventually cancel the automatic round of budget cuts. More than 70 percent of those polled agreed with that sentiment, he added.

But even though sequestration doesn’t take effect until 2013, most agree agency budgets will take a hit somewhere.

“I don’t think there’s any way around pretty steep budget cuts over the next decade,” Shoop said.

Take the GovExec poll

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