deficit reduction politics

What's happened so far on the sequester is the equivalent of spring training in baseball and pre-season in football: It doesn't count and isn't necessarily indicative of what's ahead.

But everything changes today as the sequester that so far has only been hypothetical and something primarily discussed inside the beltway starts to become real for increasing numbers of voters outside Washington.

This is not an insignificant number of people. Polls taken over the past week or so show that only about 25 percent of Americans say they have been following the sequester argument (It's really hard to call it a "debate"). That number will increase rapidly as the sequester spending cuts reduce federal services that people rely on and like and voter emotions change from amusement to annoyance to outrage.

My column from today's Roll Call explains how the debate over the fiscal cliff is proving many of the (largely GOP-driven) beliefs that have dominated the federal budget debate for the past decade are nothing but myths.

Fiscal Cliff Should Alter Budget Debate

Other than the fact that we’re now two weeks closer to its tax increases and spending cuts going into effect, not much has really changed about the fiscal cliff since my last column was published two weeks ago.