[quote=EconProf]We are seeing a lot of scary claims about how much the sequester will hurt. But just how big is it in our overall federal budget?
It is $85 billion in a budget of $2.5 trillion. That puts it at about three percent of our federal spending. Since our federal spending has exploded in the past four years, it should be easy to find the low hanging fruit and trim the fat. Instead, we will hear sob stories of cuts that hurt real people and valued programs. Instead of cutting waste, they will create real victims to pull at our heartstrings. And this strategy will probably work–it already is working with many people here.[/quote]
Re the bolded part….our federal spending really hasn’t exploded the last four years. It exploded in fiscal year ending 9/30/09. Since then, it has been relatively flat, and current projections are for it to remain relatively flat though 2014 with about a 5% increase in 2015. That’s a 5% increase after a 2% increase between 2009 and 2014. Not annual. A total increase of 2% over 5 years. The only time during our lifetimes when the budget has grown anywhere near that slowly over a 6 year period is the late 90’s. When we had a balanced budget.
