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We are closing in on Sequestration Day. Our Dear Leaders are engaged in strenous efforts to outdo each other in fomenting fear among the citizenry. If I am to believe the President and the Democrats, the very fabric of society is about to be torn asunder: Budgets cuts will make air travel unsafe, the food supply potentially poisonous- just two of the frequently mentioned results of the impending cataclysm. This merely as a consequence of removing $85 billion from a Federal budget of nearly $4 trillion.

For their part, the Republicans have obstinately held their ground, claiming that they agreed to tax increases in the fiscal cliff deal two months ago and seek to replace the across-the-board spending cuts called for by the Budget Control Act of 2011 with more judicious reductions.  As an admirer of revisionism as one of man's great creative arts, I am in awe of the Gopp's position. To clarify, the so-called Bush tax cuts were scheduled to lapse at the end of 2010; in the deal the President and the Republic Party leaders made then, the cuts were extended to last December 31; if no legislative legerdemain were performed, income tax rates would have reverted to the so-called Clinton-era levels. The fiscal cliff deal essentially made the Bush tax cuts permanent for all except the highest earners. "Tax increase" has a nicer ring to it, don't you think?

It is difficult to take seriously the alarms each side raises. The continuing budget deficits and the burgeoning national debt are complex matters, not given to the simple cures  of reductionist perscriptions put forth by feckless politicians. Our political institutions themselves are too broken to cope with sophisticated public policy in an intelligent way. I saw Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles on C-SPAN this past weekend, explaining their recently-released updated debt reduction plan; both acknowledged that the possibilities of getting significant portions of it passed into law in the current political climate were very slim.

The two biggest drivers of the Federal deficit are the military budget and Medicare. The growing cost of Medicare is invariably described as "unsustainable" and the  the suggested solutions generally involve things like increasing the eligibility age, reducing reimbursements to providers, or, in the Paul Ryan version, turning Medicare into a voucher program. As Stephen Brill pointed out in his excellent article in last week's Time magazine, "when we debate health care policy, we seem to jump right to the issue of who should pay the bills, blowing past what should be the first questions: Why are the bills so high?"

As I posted recently, this is another example of the "if-it's-broke-don't-fix-it: throw-it-out" syndrome. The political class has acceded to the inevitability of growing health care costs and divested themselves of the difficult responsibilities of challenging special interests and developing sound public policy. It is no surprise, then, that as the self-created sequestergeddon approaches, they point upwards to remind us that the sky is falling.