OH MY GOD THAT SEQUESTER IS SO SCARY AND DAMAGING! Um, not really, as Bill Wilson explains:

But the current debate over sequester – an across-the-board $85 billion reduction of budget authority which translates into just a $53.8 billion cut to outlays this fiscal year ending September 30 – is notable for both its unfounded hysteria as well as a surprising role reversal.

. . . .

[T]he sequester would scale back just one of every six dollars in discretionary spending increases since 2008 – hardly a “huge blow.” Also, discretionary spending in 2008 was already tremendously inflated – having increased by more than 60 percent over the previous eight years.

In other words this isn’t even really a cut – “devastating” or otherwise – it’s a modest growth rate reduction following years of unnecessary, embarrassing and unsustainable excesses.

Where the sequester debate deviates from the norm is in its dramatis personae. Unlike prior spending debates, the sequester features Republicans attempting to shift the onus for cutting government onto Obama. U.S. Speaker John Boehner has repeatedly referenced “the president’s sequester” while decrying its “harmful cuts.”

What hypocrisy. Obama and Boehner both supported the sequester as an excuse for yet another unsustainable run-up of our nation’s credit limit – which exhausted its latest $2.1 trillion increase last December (after less than seventeen months).

They are talking about an increase in spending — but an increase smaller than the one they wanted — as a devastating set of “cuts” that are going to imperil the economy, delay plane flights, keep your checks from coming, blah blah blah.

It makes me sick, and the fact that Boehner is playing into it is a joke.

Via Drew M. at Ace’s:

I hear ya. But don’t get too excited, little guy. It’s not that much less, and you’re still screwed anyway.