"The Sequester" Should be Rated X

To sequester. It actually means “to set apart” or “to segregate” or “to seize property especially by a writ of sequestration.” But currently, it means “economic doom.”

What is "The Sequester?”

It’s the nondescript name for an economic poison created to be so unpleasant (which begs the question... what are examples of pleasant poisons, but I digress)that Capitol Hill’s warring factions would be forced to make peace over the federal budget. Oh well.

In the summer of 2011, when the threat of a debt default loomed, the White House and Congressional Republicans (read that again slowly) crafted the Budget Control Act which appointed a bipartisan “Super Committee” to find $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years. The super committee’s failure would trigger “sequestration,” a group of approximately $1 trillion in automatic (and some would say indiscriminate) budget cuts to domestic and security programs. Economists warned then it would send the nation’s economy into a severe and sustained decline and maybe cause a double-dip recession.

To no one’s great surprise, the Super Committee failed.
 
Now we’re just weeks away from "The Sequester." (Come on, you have to admit it does soundsvaguely like some horror movie). The fiscal cliff deal brokered on New Year’s Eve postponed the cuts for two months, but now they are set to take effect on March 1 and a solution to the sequester is nowhere in sight.

Which is why President Obama has asked Congress to stave off ‘the sequester’ for a few more months, hoping such a move might buy time to replace it with smarter spending cuts. (How bad is it? To paraphrase an old Johnny Carson routine, “it’s so bad” the Congressional Budget Office says sequestration would slice U.S. economic growth in 2013 in half and hundreds of thousands of jobs would be cut. Other than that - no big deal.)
 
This might seem like incentive enough for the two parties to find the initial $85 billion in deficit reduction necessary to delay sequestration from taking effect. (Interestingly, it was Obama in 2011 who said he would veto any attempt to sidestep’ the sequester’ and yet now, he's offering an alternative in the form of a stopgap bill. This wealth redistribution thang ain't for amateurs.)

Oops – BIG problem: The Prez has insisted that any deficit-reduction package to replace ‘the sequester ‘ contain a mix of spending cuts and tweaks to the federal tax code (AKA new revenue). This is a deal-breaker for Republicans, who forswore new taxes after a fiscal cliff deal that raised taxes for the 1st time in a generation.
 
The discourse of the impasse is predictable. Republicans have stepped up their effort to charge the White House with cooking up the idea as the Pachyderms have twice voted to replace the arbitrary cuts with common-sense reforms. (BTW: While the White House disputes that it came up with ‘the sequester,’ the Washington Post did a little fact-checking and uncovered, uh-oh, the idea did indeed originate at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.)
 
And while the White House will try and blame Republicans for refusing to reduce tax breaks that benefit "the wealthy” (supply your own definition), those same Donkeys are seeking some $600 billion in new revenues. So what’s left? Another stalemate and the countdown to a self-inflicted economic Armageddon.