Budget Breakdown for Newsbound

The sequester deadline is tomorrow, across the board cuts on all parts of the Federal budget, regardless of the efficacy or importance of a program or department. The sequester was enacted as the Budget Control Act of 2011. Signed into law by President Obama in August of that year, and was the conclusion of the great  Debt Ceiling Crisis.

The statute was supposed to force Congress and the White House to reach compromises on budget and revenue issues by putting political sacred cows on the chopping block. The plan was to reduce the deficit via the so called Super Committee, avoid drastic cuts to the Pentagon (a GOP third rail) and to earned benefit programs such as Social Security (a Democratic no-fly zone), none of which ever happened of course. So we are now at the let’s burn it down phase of  the Budget Control Act. We have been stumbling from  self-induced crisis to self-inflicted calamity ever since.

During the negotiations on the debt ceiling in the Summer of 2011 the nice folks at Newsbound commissioned me to work with them on the video explainer on the budget process. Now is as good a time as any to stroll down memory lane.