Why 40 percent of Americans aren't afraid of the sequester

Are they ready to take their fiscal medicine — or just not paying attention?

How bad could $1.2 trillion in spending cuts be, really?
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

On March 1, America is scheduled to stroll off what remains of the fiscal cliff: $85 billion in spending cuts this year, split about evenly between defense and non-defense discretionary funding, plus about $1.1 trillion more in the next 10 years. The two people with the most power to avoid the cuts, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), both argued this week that the looming budget sequestration is terrible policy, guaranteeing ill-conceived slicing to the military and (according to Obama) all manner of civilian first responders. But it's increasingly unlikely that Congress and the White House will come up with a last-minute deal to replace or at least postpone the cuts — and the public is fairly evenly split over whether that's worth getting upset about.

According to a new Pew poll, 76 percent of Americans want a deficit-reduction deal that includes some mix of spending cuts and tax increases — Obama's position. But if Democrats and Republicans can't agree to a deficit plan, 40 percent say we ought to just let the sequester kick in (49 percent say we should put off the cuts until a deal is reached). The damn-the-torpedoes faction includes about a third of Democrats polled and roughly 45 percent of Republicans and independents. What's going on here?

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.