WASHINGTON — As things stand now, if Congress and the White House fail to reach a budget agreement by midnight Sunday, the federal government will have to slash its spending by a staggering $85 billion, causing sharp cutbacks in services that will quickly be felt by millions of Americans.
Sharp reductions in money for programs--and the furloughing of thousands of federal employees--would disrupt commercial air traffic, reduce access to national parks, cause delays at ports of entry and trigger shortages of fresh meats, weather forecasts and even coins.
That is but a sampling of the potentially far-reaching consequences of a continuing budget stalemate that could, under the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction law, mandate unprecedented across-the-board spending cuts throughout the federal bureaucracy.
Even mail delivery, which relies on commercial night flights, would probably be affected.
Late Friday, Budget Director Richard G. Darman ordered all department heads to be prepared to close down their agencies Monday morning if negotiators do not reach a budget accord by the Sunday night deadline. He said passage of a stopgap spending bill was "unlikely."
Some essential services or agencies are exempt from the automatic cuts--including salaries for military personnel and benefits under Social Security, disability and workers' compensation, Medicaid, food stamps and most other welfare programs.
But, even in those areas, the widespread furloughing of federal employees is likely to cause sharp reductions in business hours, delays in processing of applications and possibly huge backlogs that could affect government services for months.
There are these examples:
--Some of the most severe effects of the spending cuts would be felt by the nation's air traffic control system, where cutbacks in work hours of air controllers would force cancellation of about 3,000 scheduled flights a day.
The move would force most major airports to impose hour-by-hour flight reductions. For example, Los Angeles International currently has 82 departures from noon to 1 p.m. Under the cutbacks, only 47 takeoffs would be allowed, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
In addition, the FAA will have to cut back maintenance and security inspections by about 30%--a move that could increase the chances of maintenance problems going undetected. "You can't protect any program," said Fred Farrar, an FAA spokesman.
