On Wednesday, December 4, ARL joined 469 national organizations in a letter (PDF) urging the US Congress to replace sequestration with a bipartisan, balanced approach to deficit reduction. The organizations stated, “the budget conference opens a critical window to finally enact a responsible fiscal year (FY) 2014 budget that replaces sequestration and reinvests in our eroding national priorities…The deficit reduction enacted over the past few years has come overwhelmingly from discretionary spending cuts at ratios far beyond those recommended by bipartisan, deficit reduction groups of experts…relief from sequestration must be equally balanced between NDD (nondefense discretionary) and defense programs, as strong investments in both NDD and defense programs are necessary to keep our country competitive, safe, and secure.”
The budget conference committee has set a date in mid-December to conclude their discussions.
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 125 research libraries in the US and Canada. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at https://www.arl.org/.
