Anonymously contributed:
Congress Seen Cutting Obama's Nuke Budget
Friday, March 11, 2011 – Global Security Newswire
Recently defeated budget bills suggest fiscal 2011 funding for the maintenance of U.S. nuclear weapons will ultimately fall below levels sought by the Obama administration, the Albuquerque Journal reported on Thursday (see GSN, March 3).
President Obama requested $7 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration's weapons stockpile activities in the current budget cycle, which ends on September 30. Congress has yet to approve a final budget for the current fiscal year and the federal government is operating under a continuing funding resolution set to expire next Friday.
The fiscal 2011 spending budget passed by the House of Representatives would provide $6.7 billion for nuclear stockpile work. Though the amount is less than what Obama sought, it would provide a 7 percent increase over fiscal 2010 funding levels. A separate Senate budget proposal would have allotted $6.8 billion to NNSA weapons programs.
Though neither the Democrat-sponsored Senate plan nor the Republican-backed House proposal acquired enough votes for passage in the Senate on Wednesday, the fiscal 2011 stockpile funding levels offered by both bills suggest the ultimate amount would fall between $6.7 and $6.8 billion, Friends Committee on National Legislation lobbyist David Culp said.
"The Senate cut less, but certainly followed suit," Union of Concerned Scientists stockpile policy analyst Nickolas Roth said.
The debate over stockpile funding in the current budget cycle indicates fiscal 2012 funding negotiations could be similarly contentious, Culp added.
The White House is seeking $7.6 billion for NNSA "weapons activities" in fiscal 2012, according to a previous report (John Fleck, Albuquerque Journal, March 10).
23 comments:
It is beginning to appear that layoffs are coming for the NNSA labs. Any extra funding may help support some limited increases in construction work, but not much else. Wage freeze and benefit cuts will soon be the least of worries for employees at LLNL and LANL.
It is beginning to appear that layoffs are coming for the NNSA labs. Any extra funding may help support some limited increases in construction work, but not much else. Wage freeze and benefit cuts will soon be the least of worries for employees at LLNL and LANL.
March 12, 2011 5:04 PM
Brett Knapp will be first to "volunteer" his workers for layoffs. He just loves the opportunity to put some extra change in his pocket at the expense of nuclear weapon expertise and capabilities.
The word I'm hearing from people in the upper ranks of the accounting office indicate that funding is looking very "iffy" for the rest of this year and down-right horrid for 2012 if the GOP cuts go through. We simply have too many employees to support our current lab budgets!
To make things worse, NNSA is not being considered part of the defense or homeland departments, so it won't be excluded from the cuts targeted at the discretionary budget. Exclude defense from the budget cuts and you have all these proposed cuts falling on only 12% of the federal budget (with defense and entitlements excluded from any cuts).
By summer, it will be clear to both LLNL and LANL upper management that large cuts are going to be required in staffing and that managers need to start preparing the RIF lists. This is, indeed, bad news for an already totally demoralized lab workforce!
Good to see the sky is still always falling on this site. I supose there's a need for places to go to if you don't want to be talked out of suicide.
Hey there is no need to panic yet. Yes there will be talk in the upper management about possible scenarios if funding levels are lowered, but guess what, that is actually what management is suppose to do. They should think ahead about how to prepare for all possibilities, this does not mean that there will be RIF's cuts and so on. Take it easy.
As always in the economy and in the job market of today, workers need to be considering mobility as a virtue, and non-mobility as a death sentence. If your skills do not travel well, you are toast. Bad career choice. It doesn't mean you have to immediately go apply for welfare, but you should spend as much time considering your exit strategy as you do on your not-so-critical current job.
Whatever the final budget outcome, the recent action in both the House and Senate indicate that Obama's desire for a large increase in NNSA funding is now dead in its tracks. Not gonna happen.
You can also probably expect that one of the major NNSA construction project, either at Y-12 or at LANL, will be radically slowed down for years to come.
I was watching Chu giving testimony to a congressional committee this morning and he stated that He has directed all the labs to come up with a layoff plan.
Give me my 80k severance and I will gladly leave.
I was watching Chu giving testimony to a congressional committee this morning and he stated that He has directed all the labs to come up with a layoff plan.
Give me my 80k severance and I will gladly leave.
March 15, 2011 7:08 PM
What does this mean to the best and brightest?
Give me my 80k severance and I will gladly leave.
March 15, 2011 7:08 PM
What are you talking about?? Severance?? If you mean incentive to retire, you are delusional. That will never happen again. There has never been, even under UC, a "severance" provision in the contract. What are you smoking?
Does this rif mean only Lab employees, or would contract be at risk also?
Severance payments are at the discretion of the LLC. If they have no money in the operating budget to pay out severance, then you get laid off without it. Simple as that. Severance is not a guaranteed benefit, sorry to say.
Lots of corporations in America cut their severance level way back right before their massive layoffs starting in 2008. Coincidence? I think not!
"I was watching Chu giving testimony to a congressional committee this morning and he stated that He has directed all the labs to come up with a layoff plan."
Is this true? Can anyone else verify that Dr. Chu, indeed, has asked the lab management teams to prepare layoff plans?
First the multi-year salary freezes, continuous benefit cuts and now this?
Does this guy have any idea how demoralized the scientists are at the NNSA/DOE labs? If this layoff plan is true, then his recent comments about "valuing the best & brightest" at the NNSA labs are total bunk!
March 15, 2011 11:31 PM
You are WRONG regarding severance. Severance pay is in the employee manual. If one is in a RIF you get severance based on years of service. I just verified this.
From Contract 44 between LLNS, LLC and the US Government (NNSA) for operation of LLNL…
Part III, Section J, Appendix A – Personnel Appendix
SECTION V - PAYMENTS ON SEPARATION
(a) Reduction in Force (RIF). When employees are terminated due to a RIF, the following costs are allowable:
(1) Pay in lieu of notice. Any employee who is laid off or terminated due to a RIF may be given pay in lieu of the required minimum written notice of termination to the extent permitted by law. Accumulated vacation credit is also paid.
(2) Severance pay benefit. The severance payment shall be made in an amount equal to one week's pay for each year of continuous full-time equivalent service (a fractional year of full-time equivalent service of six months or more is counted as one year of service) not to exceed a total of 26 weeks pay.
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Severance pay is an "allowable cost", which means LLNS can take it out of the money NNSA sends to run the lab. But the question really should be - Is it mandatory that LLNS pay severance. Yes its in the employee manual, but LLNS/LLNL can change the manual at any time. When we were UC managed, LLNL HR had to get UC approval for manual changes and the change had to be consistent with UC policies. Now its just George who approves, and the policy change just has to make NNSA happy or save them money (like not paying severance).
"(a) Reduction in Force (RIF). When employees are terminated due to a RIF, the following costs are allowable"
NNSA allows (not requires) LLNS to provide severance pay.
The personnel policy provides for severance pay, but that can change anytime by LLNS .... As I recall, LLNS greatly reduced the severance pay after the last ISP (a setup for the next ISP).
Poster 11:47 AM demonstrates, yet again, just how ill informed many employees are about their benefits and so called "rights".
As other posters have stated, NNSA says it is "allowed", but there is nothing that says it is legal right like the accumulated assets in your lab pension.
Given the fact that the LLCs can't afford to pay severance out of their current operating budgets, you can probably assume you'll never see the full amount listed in the employee manual if they implement RIFs. I've heard PADs at LANL state as much to employees during meetings.
Severance would have been more secure if the labs were still managed by UC, but those days are long gone. From the way some people think, however, you get the feeling they never got the message that the management team has changed!
Gimme, gimme, gimme.
26 weeks? Yahoo!! I'll go for 24.
Chu's cancellation of salary increases cost me $600 per month. So that chink can kiss my whitey ass goodbye.
March 19, 2011 1:16 AM
You are an ignorant racist who should be show the gate.
You are an ignorant racist who should be show the gate.
March 19, 2011 7:21 AM
Too late. I think he was already headed there. Find someone else to scream your overheated accusations at.
March 19, 2011 1:16 AM:
I've only found one person happy about the pay freeze. A friend whose opinion I value even if I don't agree with it this time, especially for young employees. So some anonymous venting at the Secretary is understandable. However, the gratuitous racial slur is not.
some anonymous venting at the Secretary is understandable. However, the gratuitous racial slur is not.
March 20, 2011 11:53 AM
Really? Well, you must be quite young and sheltered. I grew up in a time and a place where "nicknames" for the various ethnicities and races were quite common, a sort of slang that the targets themselves used to refer to each other. There was nothing hateful or racist about it, it was just the way people talked back then. Everyone still got along. I think political correctness is killing our country. People need to re-learn how to develop a thicker skin and stop taking offense at such little things. Only very insecure people are so sensitive. And I am one of the "minorities" supposedly affected. In reality I refuse to be affected because I am secure in who I am and what I stand for.
Any update?
Have the self-enraptured, America-hating, lugubrious, incompetent, huckstering, idealoging, easily-distracted showmen, that dumb-ass* Americans elected to represent them in Congress f*****d things up well enough so I can get my 26 weeks severance soon?
__________________
* sorry friends, but your ability to elect competent representatives is pitiful. It is as if every district is trying to win the biggest loser** competition.
**the McInerney and Boxer districts win, with the Paul and Reid districts close behind.
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