シークエスタがどのように実施されてきているのか
3月１日にシークエスターがスタートした。大統領は、この一律のカットが膨張した計画と重要なサービスの区別なく断行されることに強い警告を発した。
その数４８。しかし、ある調査によると、そのほとんどは警告されたような事態には至っていないという。半分は実現しなかったし、１３件はまだ審議中段階にあり、残る件数のうち一部が実施されているだけだという。
そのなかで大きな影響力をもっているのは、軍事支出の削減である。著者はこのことを歓迎する立場に立っており、その点では肉切り包丁は意味のあるものである、と述べている。
（もう１つ気になるのは、シークエスターが実施されても、政府の支出は増大を続けるというＣＢＯの見解である。）
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The meat cleaver we need
Jul 5th 2013, 20:27 by W.W. | HOUSTON
IN HIS failed effort to prevent the automatic, across-the-board budget cuts known as "the sequester" from going into effect, Barack Obama warned of the inability of such a "meat-cleaver approach" to distinguish between a "bloated program" and a "vital service", and he made a list of chilling, specific predictions about the vital services that would falter. As David Fahrenthold and Lisa Rein of the Washington Post tell it,
There would be one-hour waits at airport security. Four-hour waits at border crossings. Prison guards would be furloughed for 12 days. FBI agents, up to 14.
At the Pentagon, the military health program would be unable to pay its bills for service members. The mayhem would extend even into the pantries of the neediest Americans: Around the country, 600,000 low-income women and children would be denied federal food aid.
But none of those things happened.
Mr Fahrenthold and Ms Rein examined what actually happened since sequestration kicked in on March 1. They found that of the administration's 48 dire prophecies, half have not come to pass, while the jury's still out on 13. When one looks at the the 11 predictions that have panned out, only a small handful provide cause for serious concern.
One of the basic ideas of political economy is that the costs of any particular government programme are diffuse, spread over the entire (present and near-future) taxpaying population, while the benefits of the programme are concentrated on a relatively small class of beneficiaries. Even large cuts in most specific programmes will save the typical taxpayer at best a few pennies, yet even small cuts can hit a programme's beneficiaries—administrators, contractors, subsidy recipients, etc—very hard. This asymmetry in the burdens and benefits of programmatic spending creates a corresponding asymmetry in political motivation. A few cents is hardly enough to grab taxpayers' attention, but one can count on most programmes' beneficiaries fighting tooth and nail against cuts. So, other things being equal, nothing gets cut, and government grows and grows.
Though the costs of any given programme are quite diffuse, the burden of government spending, taken as a whole, is by no means small change for the typical taxpayer. A cut in aggregate spending therefore stands to benefit many taxpayers enough to make a real difference, even when he or she takes into account losses as the beneficiary of certain programmes. On the other side of the equation, few of us see ourselves as direct beneficiaries of aggregate government spending, except in an abstract or theoretical way. Furthermore, special interests are accustomed to competing, not cooperating, for shares of the budget, so one tends not see recipients of nutritional assistance banding together with engineers from General Dynamics to mobilise against across-the-board cuts.
In other words, if we're ever going to cut spending in a serious way, we may need "meat cleavers" to do it.
That said, big, dumb, indiscriminate across-the-board cuts in reality turn out not to be as dumb or indiscriminate as they look. Politicians and bureaucrats, once faced with a settled fact of constraint, often find a way to do what they really consider important. As Mr Fahrenthold and Ms Rein report:
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