GAO 2013 Sequestration Agencies Reduced Some Services and Investments, While Taking Certain Actions to Mitigate Effects Highlights from GAO-14-244 ****** Across-the-board reductions, known as sequestration, cut federal agencies' budgets by a total of $80.5 BILLION. [image of pie chart] DEFENSE (includes the Department of Defense and funding for other agencies categorized under the national defense budget function): Discretionary reduction: $38.9 Billion Mandatory reduction: $0.1 Billion NONDEFENSE Discretionary reduction: $24.6 Billion Mandatory other than Medicare: $5.5 Billion Medicare reduction: $11.3 Billion Numbers do not add due to rounding. ****** Federal agencies and Congress took action to mitigate the effects: Agencies transferred or reprogrammed funds to higher priority activities [image of two piggy banks with arrow between them] Agencies used prior year unobligated balances to offset reductions [image of calendar] Congress enacted funding increases after sequestration that helped mitigate its effects for some selected programs [image of capitol dome and dollar bills] ****** The 23 federal agencies GAO reviewed took a range of personnel and non-personnel actions to implement reductions: Personnel-related Actions: [image of people] Canceled or limited monetary awards (20 agencies) Reduced employee travel (20 agencies) Reduced employee training (19 agencies) Curtailed external hiring (19 agencies) Reduced overtime (15 agencies) Curtailed internal hiring (14 agencies) Offered voluntary early retirement and voluntary separation incentive pay (buyouts) to employees (9 agencies) Furloughed employees (7 agencies) Non-personnel Actions: [image of jeep, building, and airplane] Rescoped contracts for: Program management or support services (19 agencies) Information technology (18 agencies) Facilities and building services (15 agencies) Hardware procurement (14 agencies) Rescoped or delayed: Other contracts (16 agencies) Planned maintenance or repairs (15 agencies) New grants (13 agencies) Core function-related activities (12 agencies) Canceled: Grants/other core function-related activities (16 agencies) Contracts related to core functions (4 agencies) ****** These actions affected agency operations and services to the public, for example: Department of Defense [image of agency seal]: Furloughed more than 640,500 employees (most civilian employees) for 6 days Department of Labor [image of agency seal]: Nearly 11 percent reduction in Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits for long-term unemployed workers on average for the remainder of fiscal year 2013 Department of Housing and Urban Development [image of agency seal]: An estimated 42,000 fewer very low-income households received rental assistance vouchers at the end of calendar year 2013 than at the end of calendar year 2012 (a 2.2 percent decline) primarily due to sequestration Department of Justice [image of agency seal]: More than 1,600 fewer criminal and civil cases filed by the U.S. Attorneys' Offices compared to fiscal year 2012 due to staffing reductions (a 1 percent reduction) Environmental Protection Agency [image of agency seal]: Conducted an estimated 1,000 fewer annual inspections for compliance with environmental laws (out of about 20,000 historically per year) ****** LOOKING FOR MORE INFORMATION? Visit GAO.GOV. Read the full report: GAO-14-244. GAO This work has been released into the public domain.