Federal Budget Chart Showing the Sequester Savings

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Using data from the Congressional Budget Office, (Summary Table 1 and Table 1-7), anyone can easily create the following chart showing how the Sequester affects the Federal budget this year and for future years.

Federal Budget Chart Showing the Sequester Savings

Hmmm…. Somehow it doesn't look like a significant cut.

Why isn't this chart the lead story on every news site with the headline, "Sequester Has Nearly Zero Effect"?

One of the rules of politics is that when forced to make budget cuts, you should always cut the most vital things first -- thus punishing the populace and their representatives for even suggesting it.

Mr. O is very good at this; he was trained in Chicago by the best political machine the world has ever known. So he immediately stated that the "choices of Republicans in Congress" will force massive cuts in Social Security and Medicare, as well as police, education, and defense.

But of course there will be no cuts for the $250 million in payments to our "friends" in Egypt, or thousands of new uniforms for the TSA, or uncountable other areas of pure waste and cronyism.

Other Democrats echo the new party line that the Sequester shows the Republicans are "intent on dismantling the government of the United States". (See Robert Reich's blog, and around 60 separate Huffington Post pieces of propaganda articles.)

Ah, if only it were true.

But government spending in 2013 will still be more than 2012 even with the sequester, and is projected to grow out of control as far as we can see into the future.

The sequester "reduction" is absolutely meaningless.
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