Hey, Politicians: Who Ya Gonna Bleed?
Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn writes in the WSJ that, since 2002, total federal spending has gone up 89 percent, while median household income has dropped 5 percent. He writes that "In other words, while families have been doing more with less, government has been doing less with more":

Sequestration will force cuts to waste that wouldn't otherwise be cut. The administration has claimed that its hands are tied and terrible things will happen, yet its warnings seem calibrated to sound scary but not too scary. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said that cuts to air-traffic control will force flight delays but won't compromise safety or cause air disasters.

He can avoid both with smart cuts. I sent him a letter this week detailing $1.2 billion in savings that would more than cover his $600 million shortfall. He could start by curtailing subsidies for "Airports to Nowhere" that serve fewer than 10 passengers a day. The department also has $34 billion in unobligated funds lying around that could help prevent delays and disasters.

The same is true of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Instead of forcing Americans to spend more time in airport screening lines, she can find savings in the wasteful grant program that gave America an underwater robot for Columbus, Ohio, and a BearCat armored-personnel carrier to guard a pumpkin festival in Keene, N.H. (population 23,000). Trimming this $830 million grant program by just one third could avoid Transportation Security Administration furloughs entirely.

But if cabinet secretaries insist on using furloughs, they could start by furloughing employees who already don't bother to show up for work. In a 2008 report, I found that the 3.5 million hours that federal employees were AWOL in 2007 could be used to screen 1.7 billion checked bags, or enough to avoid security delays for nearly four years.

... Forcing working families to bear the brunt of Washington's refusal to use discretion in spending cuts is economically indefensible and morally reprehensible.

And business as usual for both parties.