You mean the 2013 budget sequestration never happened?

Tell that to the departments that are getting $1.1T less over an 8 year period.

Between the sequestration and the lack of budget increases, the US has been going through a period of federal austerity.

Maybe it's just me, but when I think "austerity" I don't think such small-single digit percentages. If our government is that sensitive to such small piddling decreases in income, then the problem lies in the government anyhow, not the income decrease... on the timespan of your life, there will be years where the income will have to go down. Be it major famine, major natural disaster, or the need to fight an actual war again, you can't build a government edifice that only works if you feed it 105% of what it got last year, every year, after inflation, or it will fail anyhow.

Of course, expecting fiscal responsibility from a government is a fool's errand. Screaming like a stuck pig and running around yelling "AUSTERITY! AUSTERITY!" if one even breathes a threat to feed them less, and then blaming everything bad that ever happens again on the AUSTERITY is exactly what I'd expect from them. What on Earth will they actually do when something bad happens?

Anybody that thinks $1.1T is a "small piddling decrease" must be a truly wealthy person. Can you spare the government that pittance? We'd all benefit from it.

Remember how a large percentage of gov't administrators complained that their normal annual budget increase being lowered slightly was a cut? Remember how they cut services that didn't even depend on that increase in response? Calling it "austerity" is at least as honest.

If you have union contracts dictating that your costs go up by X% a year to roll over personnel, then a budget increase of less than that is indeed a cut as you'll be laying off personnel to meet the budget.

See also: Every departmental budget ever, public or private (non-unioned employees expect a small annual raise as well)

Due to inflation, budgets must increase each year. If you don't increase the budget in line with inflation, it's a cut in practical terms.

A prevarication is a lie in practical terms. Automatic budget increases are justified at the end of every fiscal year by spending all of the leftover money, i.e. unneeded money that was automatically budgeted is spent on crap solely to justify getting more unneeded money.

That may happen, but like the "cadillac welfare queen" is an exception, not the rule. For most departments, they run out of money before the end of the fiscal year.

I disagree. I worked in a few different government departments that depended on funding.

We always had a surplus at the end of the year and the boss would tell us to spend it on anything and everything because if we didn't, there would be less money in funding the next year.

The amount of waste was incredible and it made me angry. It's why I went into the private sector/started my own company.

You also almost could never get fired. We had so many bad employees that basically sat to get a paycheck and take up space. If you are really lazy, it's great.

Because of this game that is played, it's very difficult to tell if a department 'ran out of money' or just spent it to meet next year's budget.

Ask yourself, honestly, what percentage of the entire budget was that end of year splurge? In my experience it's very small, much smaller then the year to year cost inflation.

There's tons of waste in any large organization. In my experience, private companies have more waste (resources and personnel) then public organizations as they have much less oversight.

The goalposts are all over the place. The only reply I have for this is that private institutions only waste my money if I own them, the government wastes my money by force.