[Pollster1]

Our federal government is well over twice as big as it should be. I would prefer that even once the sequester is history, they should have to cut total employment gradually over time so that no one person feels like they have been harmed by the transition to responsible spending. The rule should be that departments as a whole can hire one new person for each two people who leave their employment. That would avoid the logistic issues of a complete multi-year hiring freeze, but it would also force cuts in the size of government. Similarly, new contracts could be let, but only at a rate of half the annual price for expiring contracts.

Congress should permit itself on a case-by-case basis to grant waivers for specific line items only. After ten years of mild austerity, our government would still be too big, but it would be much closer to the appropriate size. As a bonus, after ten years of mild austerity, the lobbying firms would have been starved back to a less destructive size. Best of all, there would be no starving homeless minority children in the streets who could be shown on the news as having been harmed by cutting back the size of the behemoth. If we do this now, we can avoid the more extreme pain that Greece and other countries are experiencing.

[sickoflibs]

RE :”The cuts happened, White House tours have been halted, and ...”

Critical services?

[plain talk]

Sequester is a “bare bones directive”?

Ha ha ha