I don't think this should be characterized as "cuts" to the budget. It is simply a slowing down of the rate of increase to these budgets.

Correct Joe, only in federal government can you end up with more money this year than the prior one after a 'cut'. It's fearmongering pure and simple.

To bad for the people receiving benefits for not working! Let them freeze to death, better them than me, I work for a living, people on welfare make bad choices in life, maybe if they lose their free benefits they will be motivated to better themselves! As far as the government, I believe all employees in state, federal and municipal government should lose their pensions and never receive another pay raise til the national debt is paid off! They created the problem and they should pay for it, not the people!

Marc, I'm certainly not one to condone seniors freezing to death but morons like Markey talk form both sides of the mouth. One says they want to help seniors while the other is hell bent to keep fuel prices high by limiting supply in order to continue high profits for large oil companies because federal government gets 40% of it.

Link http://taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/docs/sr183.pdf

The President has been offered the opportunity to chose where the 85 billion in cuts Could come from by the Republican House. Maybe if the guy wasn't such a filthy liar and actually put in a little more desk time, he could take up the challenge and make the cuts instead of trying to scare seniors and consumers of beef. This a manufactured crisis initiated by the criminal thugs in the White House and unfortunately is ultimately the fault of the 50.6% of the voters who installed this regime in power. All I can say is my hands are clean, I voted for the war hero in 2008, and the successful businessman/philanthropist in 2012.

sequester shmester - the rising price of gas, food, taxes and the expense of daily living raising a family is what worries me and affects me every minute of every day - the scare tactics of the powers that be in DC do not draw me in--i am sick to death of the elite ruling class inciting fear and distrust among the masses - i am sick of fraud and entitlements by able body people who choose to live off the backs of working people and expecting to get more from the gvt the more woefully dysfunctional they choose to become - and i truly feel badly for the children caught up in the mess because they have no choice at all-what have we done?

As some here that have already posted.. Let it be known to all rational beings that will listen .. that the US budget will actually be higher in April than March even with the sequester that is really only a shallow reduction in increases. The president is using scare mongering tactics day and night to create fear in population. If he's lying about this.. what else is he lying about? Don't answer that !!!.. they may be children in the room who will be shocked to learn how much unsustainable debt that has been loaded on their future and may be prone to self-damage themselves.

Marc, I am a fire fighter and I pay in to my pension and signed away my right to get social security. Why do you want to take my pension?

Also, I still have to work a second job where I still pay in to social security.

This is nothing more then an opportunity for Obama to marginalize the Republican Party in the eyes of the uninformed, and just plain stupid people. He clearly knows that the strong majority of people that follow this ass have no clue what is happening and follow him blindly as they have so far.
The problem is that we are all going to suffer from his policies, and have to date.
Romney was wrong when he said that 47 percent of America will automatically vote for this give away our future president. It appears to be over 50 percent!
To date, we have no conservative leader that can effectively explain the damage this ass is doing to the present, and future of this country as did Ronald Reagan so clearly.
This country is in trouble and in danger of going bankrupt and this ass is not even talking about cutting anything. At what point do we say that this socialist is doing this on purpose to fundamentally change this country?
( His words, not mine!)
This sequestration is a good start to move in the right direction to save this country.
Now lets see if the Republican Party is serious!

I'm not worried about $85 billion affecting me,...I am, however, extremely worried about $17 TRILLON in debt destroying the country.

Naemhoisin ____ I heard that our country has more oil that can be used to make crude oil now w/o having to import crude oil as we do. Why has our cost of crude oil gone up so quickly when it is approx. $ 94 a barrel presently? When it was well over a $ 100 a barrel it didn't go up as much as it has in the past couple months. If I'm wrong tell me why we have the prices we pay for our heat and transportation usage when the crude oil available here isn't being given us to use and pay for at reasonable costs. If Washington would stop playing political games and stop big oil companies from gouging us with their oil profits and with the tax breaks they allow them we'd be a lot better off economically . I personally feel that the government should have its own refinery to service the military uses and any overage to be put on the open market. I know that sounds like making government another oil company but it would make the playing field level by being able to give any overage for open market to use. Why is it we can allow oil companies federal lands options,etc. for them to profit by oil exploration and development at our expense? I'm ticked off with the way our country is headed but most of all I'm ticked off with our elected officials for not doing our bidding as they were elected to do. Call me radical for what I've written here but I don't want to see our country go down the tubes because of them . JMHO whats yours readers?

i could be wrong about this but i do not think i am - to say that the govt reaps more profit from the high cost of oil than the oil corporations (ie taxes)--the environmental/energy policy of the left is to render oil unaffordable for mainstream America--al gore's own words that $5 a gal would be a good thing for America - but Obama disagreed ~ he thinks $10 would be better... so you tell me who is the bigger enemy - 'big oil' or BIG BROTHER?

GOD HELP US. BLESSINGS.

The cuts will effect EVERYONE. It's interesting how a White House concept suddenly has become the White House tool for pointing at the "other side." I'm so sick of this brinksmanship strategy.

The high cost of oil is a direct result of Obama's energy policy (using the term loosely). He has practically stopped all new drilling on federal land, most of the new exploration is on private land, he has killed the Keystone Pipeline that would create tens of thousands of jobs and ensure a steady supply of energy that would benefit us and our Canadian friends up north, instead we must enrich our "friends" in the Middle East. The subsidies to the oil companies usually go to small firms that produce energy that we actually use and is DWARFED by the "green" subsidies that go to politically connected Obama friends that produces very little energy. A bunch of Academics who never had real jobs telling us how to run our economy.......................As for the Sequester, they have been talking about this for a year and half and they still can't get it done? Maybe if they had actually passed a budget in the last 4 years they would have a better handle on where the money goes. Look for them to call Central Casting and parade the most vulnerable in our society in front of the cameras, as someone stated earlier it's not even an actual cut, it a slowing of the growth of government spending, the last time year to year government spending decreased was 1954!

Both political parties are responsible for the mess we are in, not only financially, but with energy, education and so on and they will not solve these problems.
Dump both parties, abolish the Federal Reserve and kill the lawyers in Washington - You want to fix things?,...think bold - not parties.

A joke - I am amused at the way Obama has fear mongered this 2.4 % cut that he agreed to and signed to make his re-election easier. Also funny the way the lap dog press has helped him drum up fear - Draconian! Devastating! To Obama this is another way to get a tax increase/punishment on the successful to help fund his welfare state. Let the cuts happen - we have to begin to live within our means.

Finally! I discovered the perfect graphic to show just how absolutely silly sequester mania actually is. Discretionary spending would basically be back to the exact SAME amount as it was in 2009, (you remember those dark days when federal employees didn't even have enough money to pay someone to carry their trash out to the curb, shameful.)

http://www.nationalreview.com/sites/default/files/nfs/uploaded/u1842/2013/02/YL%20Sequester%20chart.jpg

from: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/341106/sequester-proportion-yuval-levin

A tax is a tax no matter what level of government it comes from. There - probably - is no doubt the prior readers and responders are right about what they wrote. If those elected in Washington were doing their jobs we wouldn't be having these blogging conversations . Those we elected do have some if not a lot of say and I blame them for not saying and doing what we want and I blame the funding of campaign election greed from lobbyist representing big business. -- question.. Why do we bother to elect them if the president has the final say in things? Answer... They allow and make the laws and pass the bills before for the the president to sign. He can raise hell about these things but he doesn't have all the say in them whether he likes or dislikes any thing from both houses before him for signing be it a republican or democrat bill or law. We can't always blame the president for every thing that has gone on when the twits we elected are to blame for not doing the things they should for us and the stability of our country. Please don't get me wrong as I'm not a real fan of the president any more than I am of the twits in the senate and congress we have representing us.

Executive Order in the hands of this man is a very dangerous thing - his own words- if congress does not do what he wants, he will bypass congress - because he believes he has that mandate from a 51% electorate

In case anyone missed it, DoD announced yesterday that 800,000 civilian jobs will be affected by this. This is just DoD -- there's much more. Meanwhile we see our First Family golfing with Tiger Woods and hanging with the stars at the Oscars while we hear the people who we are told are the "bad, evil capitalists" saying "the guy won't talk to us." Well, the evidence seems to be there: he has too busy a schedule for this, and when he gets to it, it will be another 11th-hour "I'm going to hold citizens hostage unless you bend to what I want" act.

I am so, so, SO sick of this.

SMH

I do not think the DOD budget will be slashed. What with this world of terrorists abroad and here and with the never ending threats of war overseas we'd be crazy to slash military spending. We have a lot to contend with that and the ending of illegals entering the country and what to do with those already here. Wouldn't you or anyone else think that among these illegals are some terrorists that have slipped into the country ,I do. All the twits in Washington would be really stupid to allow slashing in these two important areas where its needed the most to protect the country. JMHO is all!!

In the mean time, as I'm a civil servant, my paycheck is being threatened with up to a 20% cut over the next 6 months. I'm not the one who decided to boost the federal deficit. The group I work in has seem budget cuts over the past three years. My available resources have dwindled and we no longer have training to maintain our skills.

And now that I have a kid in college with the expected tuition expense, they're telling me I'm going to lose pay because they can't figure out how to do what they've expected all of us to do in our personal lives: live responsibly, make sensible compromises and live to a realistic budget. I took the federal job for security at the cost of private sector opportunities with higher salary potential. And now, they're all saying that means nothing. If this is the wave of the future, good luck finding anyone with desireable skills who will take a federal job. Get accustomed to underperforming government programs and higher taxes to cover the costs. Good luck with that model.

How's that Hope, Change and Forward doing?

Actually the elderly all voted for Obama! Let them freeze to death! That will save this country billions! My philosophy is every man for himself at this point! I don't need the government for anything! They steal and cheat me and my family everyday! If everybody was allowed to keep their money and we had very little government, no immigration, we would all be rich and prosperous and we would have no democrat scum sucking pigs! The only way America will survive is to overthrow the government by force! It may sound crazy and insane but look around you and see everyone suffering and your country crumbling! It will only get worse!

SHAME ON YOU. Such hatred and selfishness. It makes me embarrassed for this town. SHAME ON YOU.

Cuts happen today - everyone ok? Any reports of widespread hunger or looting?

Breaking News: the Dear Leader has blamed Republicans and continued the call more more taxes. Shocker. Film at 11.

It begs the question ... why on earth are there so many Federal Employees? When the Government becomes too large a share of the ecomony, we all suffer. They must make work for each other.

Oh, I also forget to say that my bunker is already at capacity ... somehow, 100 liberals showed up in the last hour ... empty handed by the way :-)

Stock Market finished up - rich get richer and for that I am thankful

"What about Bob?" He must be taking a vacation day from insulting comment.