For decades, federal spending has been on autopilot to grow by 3-4 percent each year unless Congress and the president decide to spend even more, as they often do. This “current services budgeting” means that when the federal government says spending is “flat,” it’s actually going up by a significant amount.
Most of the time when politicians talk about spending “cuts,” they are actually talking about reductions in the amount that spending is scheduled to increase, and not true cuts from the previous year’s spending, which would be the normal sense of the word.
The same is true of the sequester. Overall federal spending will still be higher in 2013 than it was in 2012, even with the sequester. And almost all federal agency budgets will still be higher in 2013 than in 2012—again, even with the sequester.
If you are expecting a pay raise of 4 percent and you’re informed that it will only be 2 percent next year, that’s not a cut—it’s less of a raise. You might wish for that 2 percent, but you could hardly claim that your personal finances were going to be destroyed because your raise would be less than expected. Unless you’ve already irresponsibly spent the money before you got it, as our federal government has.
In 2013, total federal spending will be $3.7 trillion—still higher than in 2012.
Over the 10 years covered by the sequester reductions, federal spending will continue to grow every year, but will grow by $1.6 trillion instead of by $1.7 trillion. The budget will remain out of balance and the national debt will continue to grow. The sequester is not nearly substantial enough to balance the budget or reduce the size of the federal government to a reasonable level, such as down from its current 24+ percent of GDP to a more reasonable and historic 18 percent. It’s also not enough to keep federal spending from rising to an economy-breaking 40 percent of GDP, as is currently projected.
Another way to look at it: The sequester in 2013 represents only 5 percent of the almost entirely wasted $850 billion stimulus program. For some reason, spending and wasting $850 billion is just fine with the Government Class, but claw back 5 percent of it and it’s a zombie apocalypse—of course, since the federal government funded first responder training for a zombie apocalypse, we should still be okay.