For hundreds of thousands of federal employees, there’s been no escaping the effects of sequester-related budget cuts, either on their jobs, their paychecks or both.
For the general public, though, not so much. In a national poll this month by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, 55 percent of those surveyed said the cuts have had little or no impact on themselves and their families.
There is another way to look at the results. As NBC News’ story notes, the percentage of respondents who said they’ve felt “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of impact stood at 22 percent, up from 16 percent in April.
But with more than half of Americans still feeling essentially unscathed, the new poll suggests one reason why Congress isn’t hustling to avert a second sequester during the new fiscal year that starts in October. The telephone survey of 1,000 respondents was conducted from July 17 through July 21 and has a margin of error of 3.10 percent.
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The impact on federal employees who have been forced into taking furlough days without pay is only now being felt. As this drags on, local businesses who depend on people spending discretionary income (places that rely on a civilian base worker lunch business, for instance) will surely feel the impact.
That is now starting to occur where I work and where I and thousands of other DoD workers are now living with reduced paychecks.
As usual people forget that the these things are slow growing like a river getting higher, not like a sudden avalanche hawked by the media to sell fear. The effect will occur, but by the time the river banks are breeched and the damage is being felt it’s too late to reverse it or do anything about it and all those claiming we were crying wolf will be the biggest and loudest mouths screaming about all the damage that’s occuring. We’ve just received our first paycheck with one day lost. It will be Aug before we all get to see the real impact in our pay. Everyone I’ve talked to has knuckled down in preparation. The pain for local businesses is starting but bound to get worse. Given the political posturing has already begun, the affects on contracts and contractors will grow into the start of the next fiscal year. When the contractors begin to feel the pain, it will get worse for the local guys. This will delay programs, waste money, etc. and we will all be paying for this for years.
I’m curious, when are the Administration and the Legislative Branch going to take matching pay cuts? We, the civilan workforce, are paying for their mistakes. Why aren’t they? Their inability to reach an agreement should carry a painful penalty to them, as an incentive to do their jobs. But, as usual, they exempted themselves so they wouldn’t have to feel the pain of their failure.
well with those 55 percent, how many people are retirees ?
im sure that they wont feel it as much as the rest of us trying to make it by this ordeal. Congress …. what a bunch of losers…
What world are we talking about? As for the general public how many of them are federal employees? I’m into my 4th week of this furlough, and already I’m feeling the effects of a reduced paycheck, the added stress of making ends meet while the price of gas continues to grow as well as the rising cost of interest on outstanding loans, not to mention the rising cost of grocies, rent the month to month bills etc.. When the next round of elections comes there should be a FURLOUGH NOTICE sent to the people (i.e our elected officials) who failed to act to prevent this from happening in the first place. Maybe then when they’re missing 20% of their earnings. they’re understand what we the government worker feels.