BATTLE CREEK, Mich– According to the White House, Michigan could see a $141,000,000 in cuts starting March 1st, unless congress comes up with a better plan by Friday.
“What we’re trying to do here is kind of figure out how we can mitigate that for our folks obviously because it greatly impacts us, 20 percent, you know, of your livelihood,” Wilson said.
Military bases across the country are going to be one of the hardest hit areas by the cuts. Colonel Ron Wilson with the Battle Creek Air National Guard Base says they are already trying to come up with a plan to make the cuts, if the sequestration goes through.
“It’s hard. It’s hard on our people. you know, that affects me the most because it’s really hard on our folks and we try, you know, my job is to try to get the information out and tell them what’s coming, but it’s hard because it changes daily, it changes hourly,” Wilson said.
The cuts would require a large amount of the base workforce to take one furlough day a week, which means their employees would take anywhere from 20-25% cut in pay. It will also impact their pilots, making it difficult for them to get the flight hours in they need, to keep their certification to fly.
“You need to be able to train; you need to be able to keep guys current. When you fly for instance, the pilots have so many currencies, and they have to keep up on different currencies, and when you limit the sorties you limit the number of training events they can do, so it affects readiness it affects training, it affects the ability to do our job,” Wilson said.
If the sequester goes through, the changes will start to take effect March 1st, and we could start seeing changes on the base as soon as April.
“It affects the whole country, our ability to go to war,” Colonel Ron Wilson, Battle Creek Air National Guard Base said.
