By William H. McMichael

The Air Force will take a “hard look” at buying back civilian furloughs if Pentagon funding included in a House­ passed bill survives the Senate and earns President Barack Obama’s signa­ture, staffers for Rep. John Carney said Thursday.

About 750,000 federal civilians who are not exempted face as many as 22 days of unpaid leave through Sept. 30, the end of the federal fiscal year, as part of an automatic $85.4 billion bud­get cut that went into effect March 1.

In Delaware, absent some sort of re­lief, 1,147 federal civilians who work at Dover Air Force Base and for the state Air Na­tional Guard will lose a total of $8.69 million.

The state Army Guard’s 198 federal ci­vilians will see $1.7 mil­lion in lost wages, and the Guard could lose $845,000 in federal con­tributions to the payroll for the Guard’s 107 state employees.

The GOP-led House bill, which passed Wednesday night, would keep the federal govern­ment running for six months and ease the im­pact of that automatic cut, known as “seques­tration.” The bill also in­cludes $173.5 billion – a boost of $10.4 billion from fiscal year 2012 – for Defense Department operations and mainte­nance, a category from which civilian salaries are drawn.

The Pentagon would be authorized to spend the money on areas it deems priorities. That means, Carney staffers say, that the Navy, for in­stance, could decide to spend money on civilian furloughs instead of air­craft carrier construc­tion.

According to Car­ney’s D.C.-based staff­ers, in comments for­warded by Carney spokesman Albert Shields, “The Air Force legislative team told us that if this bill was passed, that they would take a hard look at buy­ing back civilian fur­loughs.”

The bill passed the House 267-151. Carney was one of the 53 Demo­crats who voted for the measure. “Congress should be doing everything it can to find a solution that prevents these indis­criminate spending cuts from hurting our econo­my,” Carney said in a statement.

“Until a compro­mise is reached, it is my hope that we can pro­vide gov­ernment agencies with the flexibility they need to lessen the impact. This legislation allows the Pen­tagon to prioritize their spending so that more fi­nancing can be used for programs like battle training, flight simula­tions, equipment mainte­nance and base opera­tions, including at Dover.”

Furloughs for all 705 federal civilians who work for Dover’s 436th Airlift Wing and Air Force Mortuary Affairs Opera­tions – none were exempt­ed – are scheduled to be­gin April 25, according to 436th spokesman 1st Lt. Tony Richardson. The days are to be nonconsec­utive, and workers can take no more than 16 fur­lough hours per pay peri­od.

The base’s 512th Airlift Wing, an Air Force Re­serve command that em­ploys 239 civilians, “does not have any further spe­cific guidance regarding a potential furlough at this time” other than the calculation of $1.9 million in lost wages, spokeswom­an Master Sgt. Veronica Aceveda said. Civilians assigned to the 436th serve in a wide variety of areas, from air­craft maintenance and civil engineering to finan­cial management and con­tracting, Richardson said.

Aceveda said about 46 percent of the 512th’s ci­vilians are assigned to the maintenance arena, 22 percent are in operations and 32 percent work in support functions. Few other details of the overall sequestration im­pact at Dover have been announced. One construc­tion project has been de­ferred, Richardson said: a $595,000 plan to upgrade street, ramp and track lighting around the base and its flight line. The 436th has guidance in hand for reducing flight hours, but to date, none affect the com­mand’s missions, Rich­ardson said. Aceveda said specific budget-cutting targets for the 512th “are not avail­able” but that the com­mand is intensifying plan­ning “for longer-term budgetary uncertainty.”

Air Force Reserve Command will reduce fly­ing hours up to 18 percent, although units will be giv­en enough to maintain core competency, Aceve­da said. That figure is mir­rored in an Air Force briefing to Congress ob­tained by the News Jour­nal.

The Air National Guard has been limited to a total of 32 non-combat flying hours per month, according to Maj. Gen. Frank Vavala, the state Guard’s adjutant general. Ammunition for Army Guard training will be re­stricted to units training to deploy, and only for crew-served, not individ­ual, weapons.