When it comes to the absurdities of Business as Usual (BAU) in Washington, it is doubtful Tea Party activists harbor any illusions as to the depths to which those absurdities can go. Recently, two examples of Beltway BAU made their way into the news cycle that were too ridiculous to ignore. First, a resolution put…

If you’ll remember, in March, it came out that the Obama Administration was cutting tuition assistance for the Army and Marines, allegedly because of the sequester. This was rightly criticized as politicizing sequestration. Well, it appears Congress included restoration of the program in the Continuing Resolution – meaning, tuition assistance for soldiers, Marines, and Airmen…

From Politico, the pain of sequestration doesn’t appear to extend to the White House gardens  today and tomorrow: Tours of the White House itself remained canceled because the cuts have left Secret Service short on manpower to staff them. But there will be enough agents to staff the garden tours, the official said. The tours…

Fox News has reported the Navy’s famed Blue Angels are to be grounded, except for necessary training, because of sequestration and other factors: The Navy announced the cancellation Tuesday of over 30 shows for the stunt-flying team that were planned through November, citing budget cuts imposed by the Department of Defense. “The Navy has cancelled…

In the big picture, the Easter Egg Roll at the White House is not a constitutional responsibility of the federal government. If we were to fully return to constitutional limits in Washington, it almost certainly would not take place ever again. Until we do reach that point, however, and have billions spent on things that…

When the possibility of overturning the sequester first came up in late 2011 – only weeks after the so-called “Super Committee” failed to come up with a “grand bargain” for deficit reduction – President Obama was very firm – there would be no sequestration replacement: “Already some in Congress are trying to undo these automatic…

Yesterday, as the political world focused on Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) filibuster heard ‘round the world, the House passed its version of the Continuing Resolution to keep the government running until the end of the 2013 fiscal year (FY). The legislation, which passed with strong bipartisan support, deserves a mix of reactions. It included sequestration,…

Today, sequestration kicks in. The Beltway crowd has spent the last several months claiming these minor spending reductions will greatly harm the country, and the Obama Administration in particular has said sequestration will delay air travel because of $600 million in budget reductions, leave tens of thousands of parents scrambling for child care, and force…

Since the Budget Control Act (BCA) became law in August 2011, both parties have prominently pushed to avoid the spending reductions in the law. Republicans have wanted to avoid the defense side of things, and Democrats have wanted to avoid the social program side of things. After all, $85 billion in “cuts” to spending is…

From Reason Foundation, an important find: If you want a thorough agency-by-agency rundown of the budget cuts sequestration would deliver, the Office of Management and Budget has you covered. In compliance with The Sequestration Transparency Act of 2012, the OMB sent a detailed report to Congress in September 2012. But there’s a small problem with the report:…