Discussing Furlough Concerns at Military Bases, Hagel Has "No Good News" JOINT BASE CHARLESTON, S.C. - Sandra Walker used respectful tones as she spoke, but there was iron in her voice when she confronted Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel about sacrificing 11 days of pay because Congress and President Obama could not agree on taxes and spending. A mother of six - three are still at home - Ms. Walker is a civilian Defense Department employee who trains personnel at the 628th Medical Group at this base, home to Air Force cargo planes and the Navy's nuclear propulsion school. Like hundreds of thousands of Pentagon civilian employees, she began a furlough this month that will keep her home without pay one day a week until Oct. 1. "I've taken a second job to compensate," she said. As if that were not challenge enough, her growing worry is that the partisan stalemate in Washington will linger, the Pentagon budget will be slashed further and extensive layoffs will result. "Will we be protected in the security of our jobs, in our retirement?" she asked the defense secretary. The news from Mr. Hagel was grim. "I've got to be honest with you," he said, explaining that if the forced spending reductions, called sequestration, are not lifted, the Pentagon will confront $52 billion in more cuts for 2014. If we have to do that, we'll probably be beyond furloughs. We're going to have to eliminate some jobs. Over three days visiting military bases of all four armed services across the southeastern United States this week, Mr. Hagel, a former Nebraska senator, told everyone that compromise in Washington was unlikely. "There's no good news," he said in Charleston to military personnel and civilian Defense Department employees. "Sequestration is a mindless, irresponsible process," he said. You know it, I know it. And I'm hoping that our leaders in Washington will eventually get that and come to some policy resolution. I used to be in that business. I'm not in that business anymore. The audiences in Charleston, Fort Bragg, N.C., and Naval Air Station Jacksonville, in Florida, were courteous, and some expressed gratitude that the defense secretary had traveled outside Washington to deliver the dark financial forecast. But they did not hide their frustrations. Their recurring lament was that lost in the loud debate over the budget in Washington were the countless ways that sequestration harms rank-and-file soldiers, civilians and families. Claire Riggle is a civilian employee at Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg. Her husband is a soldier at the post, and like all active-duty personnel, he was exempt from the salary cuts. "I have been hit by the furloughs, and they're inconvenient and difficult," she said. But what bothers me more is the effect it has on our children. Teachers across the Defense Department school system are civilians and fall under the furlough order. In their absence, classes would be canceled. "So within the first month of school, the children will have missed a whole week of school," Ms. Riggle told the defense secretary. So I'm just wondering what's going to be done about the education requirements, the standard of education? What's going to be done for our children? Mr. Hagel said that 800,000 Defense Department civilians could have been put on furlough, but that 150,000 received exemptions, mostly for reasons of safety of the force, equipment and installations. He noted he had already moved to address the concerns of parents. Teachers received a partial exemption and are furloughed for less than a week, with instructions to take those days off in bulk before the school year begins. Some programs, like Advanced Placement preparation classes, were exempted altogether, Mr. Hagel said. Some on Mr. Hagel's route expressed frustration at how furloughs may, in the end, cost the government more. An earlier version of this article misstated the given name of a civilian employee at Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg, N.C. She is Claire Riggle, not Clair.