{"id":3790,"date":"2013-02-25T19:11:03","date_gmt":"2013-02-26T01:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=3790"},"modified":"2013-02-25T13:51:12","modified_gmt":"2013-02-25T19:51:12","slug":"age-of-austerity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=3790","title":{"rendered":"Age Of Austerity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake argue in the Washington Post that the forthcoming across the board budget cuts (also known as the sequester) may be the best way to focus Americans\u2019 minds<\/a> on a basic contradiction in their thinking: they like the notion of cutting government spending but they balk when asked to identify specific cuts they would prefer. As the cuts take hold and people begin to notice the consequences, perhaps they will start pressing lawmakers for a smarter, less arbitrary method to reduce spending.<\/p>\n

Of course, this assumes that the cuts will be sufficient to get voters\u2019 attention. On this point, I\u2019m skeptical. Even though the Obama administration is doing its best to illustrate how the sequester will have real-life consequences<\/a>, it may not happen quickly enough to register as a noticeable change. We are already accustomed to tolerating flight delays, understaffed government agencies, and underfunded schools. I\u2019m not sure the sequester will be draconian enough to upset the average American\u2019s low expectations of the public sector\u2014expectations that have already declined substantially in recent years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake argue in the Washington Post that the forthcoming across the board budget cuts (also known as the sequester) may be the best way to focus Americans\u2019 minds on a basic contradiction in their thinking: they like the notion of cutting government spending but they balk when asked to identify specific […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-18-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-Z8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3790"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3791,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3790\/revisions\/3791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}