The sequester: On to the next crisis IT WAS billed as an emergency cabinet meeting, but the atmosphere in the crowded conference room in Baltimore's City Hall was more confused than panicked. The mayor had summoned her lieutenants to discuss the impact on the city of the "sequester," $85 billion in cuts over the next seven months across much of federal government spending, which began on March 1st. Before the mayor arrived, city officials milled about, debating how much they might lose. "The highway trust fund isn't affected, is it?" asked one. "I think we're OK," another replied. Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the mayor, left no doubt that Baltimore would suffer from the sequester. Roughly 12% of the city's revenue comes directly from the federal government, she said. Some of the $81m it is expecting to receive from the state of Maryland this year also has federal origins - although no one seems sure exactly how much. The loss of a percentage point or two from the city's budget may not sound so grave. But Baltimore already had a projected deficit of $750m over the next decade. The mayor had already proposed cutting the city's workforce by 10% over eight years and trimming pension and health-care costs. The new cuts leave the city with little choice but to shave services further. Moreover, a spokesman says, programmes to help the poor will be hardest hit - a particular concern in a city where 85% of schoolchildren are poor enough to receive subsidised meals. Baltimore has not yet received any formal notice, says its finance director, Harry Black, so he has instructed all departments to assume that they will get 9% less from Washington for the rest of the year, thanks to the overall reduction demanded by the sequester across all categories of what is termed "non-defence discretionary spending." The department heads, in turn, are trying to figure out which contracts can be broken, how much notice they need to give before dismissing staff or placing them on furlough (fiscal jargon for involuntary, unpaid leave) and whether there are legal restrictions on cutting services supported by the state and federal governments. Baltimore's Transportation Department seems certain that money for a planned new light-rail line will evaporate. Its Housing Department thinks it will have to withdraw rent support from 830 families. Perhaps 600 people will be dropped from substance-abuse programmes. Local schools do not think they will have to resort to lay-offs until the new school year starts. The police, training programmes for the unemployed, meals for the old, poor and infirm, subsidised day-care slots for children, homeless shelters, free HIV tests - all will lose a bit of cash, but the precise amounts and timing are still up in the air. Karen Sitnick, the head of the city's job-training agency, says she is "scouring the net" in an attempt to find out more. At Johns Hopkins University, the city's biggest private employer and a recipient of copious federal funding for scientific research, the picture is equally muddled. The National Institutes of Health, which doles out money for medical research, has started trimming 10% from new grants, says Scott Zeger, the vice provost for research. Whether it will also cut disbursements for research that is already under way, he is unsure. Calculating the cuts at the university's Applied Physics Laboratory is even more complicated, since it has contracts with both civilian agencies, which are losing about 5% of their annual funding, and military ones, which are forfeiting 8%. The federal officials whom the city and Johns Hopkins are waiting to hear from seem just as confused. Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, declared at the end of last month that some teachers "are getting pink slips now" as a result of the sequester, before later retracting the claim. This week Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, gave warning that the suspension of overtime for customs officials was causing long delays at some airports, but named the wrong ones. The delays proved only passing, anyway. Mr Obama himself insisted - incorrectly, it turned out - that the cleaners who tidy up after the callous lawmakers at the Capitol would see their pay cut. Republicans argue, with some justification, that these mistakes mark the unravelling of Democrats" claims that the sequester will do grave damage to the economy and bring misery to millions. The president and his allies, they say, are exaggerating in order to make the case for tax increases to replace the planned cuts. A reduction in spending is necessary, they maintain, to trim the deficit (which reached $1 trillion, or about 7% of GDP last year), and the worst of the pain could be salved by giving Mr Obama or his underlings more discretion over how savings should be made. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives this week approved a bill that would do just that, but only for the cuts to defence, border protection and other aspects of national security. It's not so bad, they say Mr Obama continues to rebuke Republicans for favouring tax loopholes for the rich and well-connected over government programmes that help ordinary Americans (see Lexington). But the barrage of grim statistics about the horrors the sequester will inflict has diminished somewhat in recent days. Instead of threatening a veto of the Republican bill, the White House has said it "looks forward to working with Congress to refine the legislation." The Democrats who run the Senate are angling for more administrative discretion over the civilian cuts, too, rather than any change in overall spending levels, let alone tax increases. Both sides have signalled that they are keen to reach an agreement on all this by March 27th, when Congress must pass a mini-budget for the rest of the fiscal year or see all but the most urgent functions of government suspended. All this means that for the next few months, at least, the Republicans seem likely to get their way. They have managed to whittle back Mr Obama's spending ambitions several times over the past two years (see chart), although the president, for his part, did extract Republican acceptance of some tax increases in January. But Mr Obama has not given up - rather he seems to have decided to wait to press his case at one of several impending fiscal deadlines. Over the summer, Congress will have to increase the limit it sets on government debt; by October, it will have to pass a new budget. Both occasions will provide yet another opportunity for more to-ing and fro-ing over spending and taxes. By then, the fallout from the sequester, in both human and political terms, will be clearer.