CBPP Issues Report on How Across-the-Board Budget Cuts Will Impact Federal Programs - December 5, 2011

The debt limit deal of August 2 — the Budget Control Act (BCA) — imposed caps on discretionary programs that will reduce their funding by almost $1 trillion over the next decade, relative to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) baseline of this past March. It also established a Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to propose legislation reducing deficits by another $1.2 trillion over that period, and established a backup “sequestration” procedure.  Because the Joint Committee failed to achieve its goal, sequestration — a form of automatic cuts that apply largely across-the-board — is now scheduled to occur starting in January 2013 and to cover the period through 2021.