Kappos komments on kuts by Kongress

from the PTO director's blog on April 22, 2011 (one week after the budget slash of April 15):

Effective immediately and until further notice:

Track One of the Three-Track program, which offers expedited patent examination and was scheduled to go into effect on May 4, 2011, is postponed;
The opening of the planned Nationwide Workforce satellite office in Detroit, as well as consideration of other possible satellite office locations, is postponed;
Hiring—both for new positions and backfills—is frozen;
IT projects will be scaled back;
Funding for Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) outsourcing will be substantially reduced;
Employee training will be reduced;
All overtime is suspended.

***UPDATE. A comment to Richmond:

Mr. Farmer makes some excellent points about the problems associated with fee diversion from the Patent Office.

Of --That isn't possible because of the diversion of the office's fees. The Patent and Trademark Office acknowledged in its publication about the fast-track rules that this program would have slowed down regular applications for the rest of the current fiscal year. That's ultimately why fast track was postponed. --, it is likely that Track One of the Three-Track program, which offered expedited patent examination and was scheduled to go into effect on May 4, 2011, was postponed simply because there was no money to implement it. Similarly, the Patent Office postponed the Detroit satellite office for lack of funds, and has suspended all overtime.