The budgets of most federal government programs and agencies
will shrink on March 1. Congress could prevent that from
happening, but it's not likely to do so before the deadline.
It's still unclear, however, whether Congress would let the so-
called funding sequester stay in effect for long. So one way or
another, here come the cuts. What is the sequester exactly? It's
just a fancy word for automatic, across-the-board cuts in
funding. How much will be cut? The sequester would slash how
much federal agencies are allowed to spend by $85 billion over
seven months. The White House estimates that funding for
nondefense programs would be cut by 9 percent, while defense
programs would be cut by 13 percent, for the seven months
remaining in fiscal year 2013, which ends Sept. 30. The funding
reductions would come primarily from what's known as
discretionary spending. Discretionary spending supports a vast
array of programs, agencies and services from the FBI to the FDA
to support for the Corporation for Public Broadcas