February 26, 2013--Let the Sequestering Begin!

Bring it on. Let's get this out of our system.

Most congressional Republicans for years now have been wanting to slash spending and even reduce the federal government to a size--to quote the ever quotable Grover Norquist--so that what remains of it "can be drowned in a bathtub." So let's allow the sequester to occur later this week and then let the public (including conservatives) see what it's like to have their government severely reduced. And watch, as a result, their precious 401(k)s melt away as the stock market tanks as foreign investors in American securities bail out.

Let's see how the public feels when their kids' teachers are put on furlough, cops are laid off, Medicare reimbursements stall, and Social Security checks don't arrive. Let's see how the flying public feels about slower airport security checks and dramatically reduced plane schedules because air traffic controllers have been furloughed. Let's see how parents and college students pay for tuition after draconian cuts in federal student aid, including low-interest loans. Let's see how we do if we experience a natural disaster and FEMA doesn't have adequate resources to respond. And let's see what happens if the Pentagon has to respond to an international crisis but doesn't have the money to pay for the deployment of troops or ships.

These fiscal hawks will be happy if people living in poverty (mainly children) loss their food stamps or can't get treated by Medicaid. They'll be gleeful that the 47 percent that they believe prefer welfare to work can't get their prescription drugs filled and that those on unemployment insurance will have to panhandle on street corners if they can't find work or are too "lazy" to try. Including granny. As Ron Paul said during one of the Republican debates, if they can't take care of themselves, let them die.

So, let's have it out. Reasonable voices from both sides are feeling that they are being held hostage by radical elements in their own parties, so let's let the radicals have it their way. It may be that the only way to purge the system of them is to see what happens to the fabric of American life if they are able to shrunk government to Norquist's pigmy size.

We've been having a theoretical, ideologically-driven debate for years, for decades. Liberals claim that to reduce government as the sequester would require, over time, will will harm our economy; lead to more unemployment; cut back services that people need and have come to depend on while social and fiscal conservatives claim that the federal government, through profligate spending, has spawned a nation of unproductive "takers" and such an unsustainable national debt that the only solution is massive, across-the-board spending cuts.

This so-called debate (really, both sides talking past each other) cannot be resolved in theory (though, in my view, the preponderance of real evidence supports a robust but limited role for government). So, we should allow the cuts to take place and monitor the consequences. If everything continues to work pretty well, score points for Tea Party followers; if the economy stumbles further and services are cut in ways that effect much of what people feel they need and what is necessary to defend ourselves, the drown-the-government-crowd will be discredited.

So, as painful and risky as it might turn out to be, I am in favor of permitting all the spending reductions currently on the chopping block.

If things turn out to be a version of unlivable, we can always restore the most essential cuts and make them retroactive, acknowledging that even if this were to happens the Rand Pauls will rant on, but their case will have been greatly impeached.