President Barack Obama

Citizens across the country have been preparing for a series of steep federal spending cuts that will likely take effect tomorrow — including the state’s education and research officials, who are prepared for the blowback resulting from the across-the-board reductions.

President Obama is set to meet with House and Senate leaders tomorrow when the cuts are slated to begin. But even if Washington’s leaders cannot come up with another way to temper the nation’s more than $16 trillion debt, university researchers said they are well suited to deal with sequestration’s effects.

As part of a budget reduction deal in the summer of 2011, congressional lawmakers negotiated the sequester, which triggers a series of devastating cuts that go into effect tomorrow. It will reduce spending by $1.2 trillion over the next decade.

If the government does not craft another way to curb national spending, sequestration would cut $85 billion — or2.4 percent — of all federal spending between March 1 and Sept. 30. Higher education would lose about 8.2 percent of federal funding, according to a fall report from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. However, Congress has another round of budget negotiations to grapple with before March 27, when several federal programs are projected to run out of money. If national leaders do not craft a way to fund those programs, the country would be left with a partial government shutdown.

“The one thing that I think everybody agrees on, regardless of party, is that this is absolutely the worst way to go about it,” said Don Kettl, public policy school dean.

UNIVERSITY RESEARCH PREPARED

FOR CUTS

While select government agencies are immune to cuts, federal research isn’t one of them. The National Institutes of Health will face cuts, along with university research.

Even if Congress does not avert the sequester, university research will still thrive, said Daniel Lathrop, the computer, mathematical and natural sciences college’s associate dean for research.

“Our research enterprise is vibrant. We are doing much better than many of our peers,” Lathrop said. “I think we will weather this with some difficulty if it’s not resolved this week.”

The university will not immediately feel the impacts of the cuts, as they will hit federal agencies, such as NIH, before directly affecting individual states.

“If the cuts do hit, things will be slow to roll down to the campus level, in as much as we’re not on the first line of difficulties,” Lathrop said.

Yet there would be long-term consequences to adjust to if the cuts are permanent, research Vice President Patrick O’Shea wrote in a recent internal memo to faculty.

“Because the majority of our research funding comes from federal sources, sequestration would have a significant impact on our research enterprise here at UMD, and at all research universities,” O’Shea wrote.

If funds drop, it would only impact the number of future grants to researchers, not current grants — those already awarded wouldn’t be pulled back. Students and faculty are currently working on projects in quantum physics, cybersecurity, neuroscience and life sciences, and “that’s just four snippets,” Lathrop said.

“It’s not like you wake up March 1 and our research enterprise is fundamentally gone, because they’ve already dispersed the money,” Lathrop said.

Sequestration mandates that most areas face an equal percentage of required spending cuts, but the impact on education and research programs largely depends on how they’ve individually prepared, said Tony McCann, an adjunct lecturer who has been a senior official in budget negotiations in both Congress and the executive branch.

“It’s very idiosyncratic with each individual grantee and each individual program,” he said. “They probably, at least the more sophisticated of them, have been expecting this thing to come for a while, so they’ve been slowing down hiring, spending and they’ve put themselves in a circumstance [where] they give themselves a little bit of headroom.”

IMPACT ON STATE EDUCATION

For Gov. Martin O’Malley, state educators and students, the cuts could pose a problem on a much broader scale. Sequestration could harm the educational gains the state has made, not only at this university but in primary schooling, too, said spokeswoman Takirra Winfield.

O’Malley, however, has watched the political theater in Washington over the last several months and is still committed to keeping tuition rates low, Winfield said. His recent budget proposal calls for increasing the state’s Rainy Day Fund and cash reserves to about $1 billion on hand to guard against sequestration’s potential damages.

“The governor was prepared. We’ve been monitoring the situation in Washington for a long time now, and I don’t expect [rate increases]” because of the state’s preparation, she said.

In his proposed budget for fiscal year 2014, O’Malley also calls for a 2.5 percent increase in the state education department’s funding. That means education spending would account for about one-fifth of the total budget.

“[The governor] understands that the investments we make in early education all the way to higher ed are connected and are linked,” Winfield said. “This is all part of preparing Maryland to have a strong workforce in the future.”

The sequester’s impact on state education can be mitigated, McCann said, because the state already spends more on education than what it receives in appropriations. And one key higher education item that won’t be cut is the Pell Grant program, which provides federal aid to thousands of college students each year.

While certain areas are protected, the cuts could still devastate the state economy, O’Malley said yesterday, according to his office. And 650 children could lose the opportunity to take part in the Head Start program, which provides education and health services to low-income families.

“Too many moms and dads in our state will lose jobs, too many children will lose access to programs like Head Start, and too many of our most vulnerable Marylanders will lose assistance from the safety net we’ve worked so hard to protect,” O’Malley said.

Although it’s difficult to prioritize certain spending areas over others, the government should be careful not to lessen educational quality, Kettl said.

“On the one hand, it would be folly to think that anything can and should be held off the table,” he said. “But on the other hand, there are lots of reasons for thinking that we need to be very, very careful about making cuts that undermine our ability to be competitive in the long haul.”

BROADER EFFECTS

Even if Congressional leaders can avert the sequester, there are plenty of budget battles ahead — including the partial government shutdown that could come at the end of next month, which could be problematic for the country’s budget woes down the line.

“There is another opportunity for either a crisis or a more comprehensive solution,” McCann said. “If I were a betting man, I suppose I would bet that it’s going to be another problem.”

And the sequester was never supposed to become an actual possibility for the country — the cuts proposed were supposed to be so devastating that lawmakers would effectively have no choice but to work out an alternate deal.

“The totally unthinkable has become not only thinkable, but the foundation for the next round of debates,” Kettl said.

But some said the cuts will not be that harmful. Washington Post columnist George Will called sequestration a “manufactured crisis” in a column last week and said Obama was stoking “synthetic hysteria” over relatively benign cuts.

This state is especially vulnerable to the impending defense cuts and employee furloughs because of its proximity to Washington, O’Malley said Sunday on CBS’ Face the Nation. “There’s a real risk for areas, especially the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia, where there are large concentrations of federal employees and federal dollars,” Kettl said. “There’s likely to be a domino effect.”

As government employees are paid less and have less to spend, Kettl said, employees could be laid off, sales could go down and states could lose revenue from both sales and income taxes.

“Nobody knows for sure what the story is, but the downstream impact on the economy could be quite substantial, especially in places like Maryland where there’s already a substantial federal presence,” he said.

The measure was supposed to necessitate compromise, but it has instead resulted in another round of debates, Kettl said. Though a deal is unlikely, he said, the possibility does exist.

“It’s hard to argue which [cut] is the most mindless, but the most important thing here, of course, is this was never supposed to happen,” Kettl said. “One of the things people have gone broke on is betting against last-minute details. The odds, however, are slim.”