LOMPOC - March 1, 2013 is the start of "sequestration", $46 billion in automatic cuts to the Pentagon's 2013 budget.
The Pentagon says it will mean the loss of 100,000 new soldiers, canceled deployments and the loss of essential military training.
"Our military power will be less credible because it will be less sustainable", said Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Senate Armed Forces Committee in Congress on Tuesday morning, "now we are only a few days away from making that a reality."
The Pentagon already has a hiring freeze in effect.
It also warns of furlough days and future job cuts for civilian workers if sequestration is allowed to begin and continue.
The loss of civilian jobs at Vandenberg Air Force Base would send economic shock waves through the Lompoc Valley.
"A lot of those people live in this community, buy homes here, buy their groceries, buy their gas", says Lompoc Valley Chamber of Commerce CEO Ken Ostini, "it's a huge impact on our community."
As a former civilian worker on the base, Ostini knows how deep Vandenberg' economic roots are in the Lompoc Valley.
"There's more civilians on the base than there are military", Ostini says, "so they all have probably a bigger impact than the actual military persons themselves because more of them live in the communities, and they may live there their entire lives versus the military who rotate in and out."
The Pentagon says there would most likely be 22 furlough days, days off without pay, for the roughly 800,000 civilian workers at U.S. military installations as the first consequence of sequestration.
