Hey Washington: Sequester these real facts

Wolf! Wolf!

Just another day at the office for our elected leaders as they forgo the job of managing and leading our nation and resort to name calling and “blame-storming,” the practice of throwing names on a board until one of them strikes everyone as the perfect person to blame for the current mess.

Since my grasp of math is tenuous at best, I needed a simple way to understand these “draconian” cuts of $85 billion (with a b!) that will impact every man, woman and child and lead to mass starvation, expose us to foreign military attack and cause economic collapse. Or not.

The current federal budget (and yes, I know Congress hasn’t formally passed one in four years) is $3.8 trillion (with a t!). The sequestration cuts are $85 billion. Carry the zeros…it’s 2.4 percent and (I hope you are sitting down for this) that’s after the Federal Budget increased 8 percent year-to-year. So basically, these “horrible” cuts do nothing to reduce government spending and only cut the rate of growth from 8 percent to 6 percent.

While there is little argument that cutting like this may not be the best way to reign in federal spending, the claims of an “end of days” scenario are fantasy at best, just like the concept that Congress would ever cut anything voluntarily, especially if it cost any of them even one vote.

Cut away!