The whole thing's a mess, the cuts are arbitrary and stupid (although defence did need cutting) and the Republicans are mostly to blame.

Many Republicans are not at all unhappy with this.

Understand that for many of them, it is not the level of funding or the amount of the deficit that is the issue.

They fundamentally do not want government to do most of the things it currently does.  So defunding anything is a good thing to them.

One might think that when some of these start impacting their corporate allies, there might be some pushback; but many of this new crop of Republicans don't care.  They don't listen to the business community anymore.  Otherwise, we would have had a deal months ago; what business wants is stability and predictability (in other words, any deal at all), not continued feuding and gridlock.  Good luck with that, with the current bunch of yahoos.

The whole thing is totally stupid.

1. We do not have a deficit problem. (For those who actually care about these things - the monetarists among us who have no freaking idea about how economies work - the deficit has been declining since Obama took office).

2. For the most part we do not have a spending problem. We do have a spending priorities problem.

3. We do have a revenue problem which mostly relates to fiscal and tax policies which have adverse economic impacts such as encourage outsourcing, encourage export of capital, favor economically destructive business models, etc... 

The entire blame for the sequester and any adverse effects we may suffer from it lies with the Republicans, who are also responsible for the last recession and the lackluster recovery from it. 

Mar 6, 2013 -- 4:40PM, Nepenthe wrote:

Well, the Repubs passed a continuing resolution that gives back all funding to the DoD, yet again showing that they, in fact, do not believe in a limited federal government.

It only shows that they believe in a bloated military/industrial complex, which is something we already knew.

The difference between Republicans and Democrats can be summarized as follows.

Republicans want big intrusive government in your personal affairs (marriage, reproduction, etc...), corporate welfare and welfare for the well to do, large government expenditures in defense and defense related industries. They want the government funded by Democrats so they can complain about big spending Democrats.

Democrats want big intrusive government in the public interest into the affairs of corporations and those who use common resources (air, water, etc...), welfare for the needy and large government expenditures to invest in American infrastructure and people. They want the government funded and so get labeled as big spending Democrats.

and here it is folks . . .

Who Is The Smallest Government Spender Since Eisenhower? Would You Believe It's Barack Obama?
. . .
www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/05/2...