... is not that $85 billion will be "cut" from the federal budget over eight months.
It's that the entire federal budget comes to not just more, but lots more, than $127.5 billion (what that $85 billion, extended to one year, adds out to).
Think about it: $127 billion breaks out to about $400 for every man, woman and child in the United States. Do you really think you're getting $400 worth of anything good out of Washington?
You know, I might be willing to pay them $400 just to go away. If it would work. But of course it wouldn't work, any more than feeding other wild animals does.
So anyway, that $85 billion "sequester" represents a "cut" (from projected increased spending, not from last year's actual spending -- neat trick, huh?) of $283 per American ... from previously projected 2013 federal outlays of more than TWELVE THOUSAND DOLLARS per American.
To call the sequester a drop in the bucket is insulting to drops. And to buckets. I'd say "serious" starts at $1 trillion.
