Enactment of the "fiscal cliff" legislation delays at least for the meantime the need for agencies to make firm plans toward possible employee furloughs and other budget-cutting actions caused by sequestration.
However, the bill only puts off for two months those cuts of around 10 percent in many agency programs, meaning that unless political leaders act before March 2 to find the savings in other areas, the cuts will go ahead at that point. And because there will be less time left in the fiscal year to make the reductions, the cutting may have to be more aggressive.
In addition, the fiscal cliff bill orders additional, largely unspecified, reductions in domestic spending that agencies will have to manage regardless of whether the sequester hits or not.
If a furlough happens, it would be up to individual agencies to decide how and when to allocate the unpaid time off. Numerous agencies had signaled that they were considering furloughs, including DoD, which in essence said that all its civilian workers would be subject to furloughs due to a sequester, although it didn’t say for how long, or when. DoD said it would look for other savings first, but those did not project to be sufficient to prevent a furlough.
The administration meanwhile promised that it would comply with notice and bargaining requirements regarding furloughs, which in many cases would mean that a furlough could not take effect for weeks or even months even after an agency had decided on a furlough.
Updated OPM guidance on furloughs is at http://www.opm.gov/furlough.
