The Pentagon has officially started discussing how it’s going to carry out the first $50 billion across-the-board spending cut as part of the 10-year, $500 billion sequestration cuts set to take effect Jan. 2. To make sure the cuts don’t affect military personnel, programs and operations too drastically, the White House Office of Management and Budget has tasked the Defense Department with overseeing the decisions.

As an overseer, the Department of Defense (DoD) will need to do some major planning on the numbers and specific consequences of sequestration. To avert cuts to defense spending, the DoD has called for Congress to come up with a deficit reduction deal. However, Republicans and Democrats are currently in a lame-duck session of Congress and can’t come up with a solution to stave off sequestration.

For information on sequestration, please visit Federal Times.