About two weeks ago a facsimile machine at the Defense Department headquarters stopped working. Requests that were faxed to the Office of the Secretary of Defense were undeliverable. This machine is handling FOIA requests but is not working and may stay that way for about another month or more. Journalist Shawn Musgrave asked the Pentagon when they think the machine might start working and the Defense Department said that if a replacement is not available right now it will have to wait until the new fiscal year.
After talking to Aaron Graves of the OSD, Musgrave said that is bears repeating that the office that oversees the military is not able to project when one fax machine will be operational again.
The military though is budgeted to spend more than one trillion dollars in FY2012. It is also in progress with the F-35 fighter jet program which is the most expensive weapons system that has ever been ordered.
This isn't to say that the fax machine problem is the only issue at hand. A study that was released by Goldman Sachs seems to think that you could see as many as 100,000 federal jobs gone because of budget cuts that will happen during the next year. Many agencies in the federal government have thought of strategies to adjust to the sequestration this year, but these are only temporary. They did employee furloughs and also deferral of maintenance and training. They put into practice these ideas hoping that the sequestration would be reversed. If it doesn't get reversed the federal agencies will have to think of a more permanent adjustment which could mean a loss of jobs.
As of right now, concerning the fax machine, journalists will most likely have to send their FOIA requests by mail or send an online request. If that doesn't work though maybe someone will tell the Pentagon to go to Best Buy. They have a nice fax machine for around 150.
So as you can see, the government has a lot going on by way of having the budget cut down. It has made it more difficult for them to even afford a fax machine.
