Remember how the sequester was supposed to ravage the landscape? The automatic spending cuts would, we were told, cause all manner of pain and suffering – inconvenience, even – as David A. Fahrenthold & Lisa Rein of the Washington Post report, we were warned:
At the Pentagon, the military health program would be unable to pay its bills for service members. The mayhem would extend even into the pantries of the neediest Americans: Around the country, 600,000 low-income women and children would be denied federal food aid.
These things did not happen. The sequester is a bad way to do business, allowing Washington to avoid hard choices and pin the blame on a budgeting contraption of its own making which is designed to make the public beg for mercy. More spending, please. Higher deficits, please. Anything but this awful Sequester.
Instead:
And, miracles happened … for instance:
The bad news is that the sequester did real damage to the nation’s military and that it probably set a precedent for the use of similar gimmicks in the future and a predictably cynical response from the public when it is warned about the dreaded effects.
