Left, even the Congressional Budget Office knows sequestration has nothing to do with program cuts. (nationalreview.com)

By Brandi Makuski

If you believe the hype, the world as we know it will end on Friday.

Parents will have to scramble to find child care and people will lose their jobs. Head Start will fall, we’ll face a nationwide shortage of teachers, first responders and FBI agents, the country will suffer food shortages and airports towers will close.

All of these claims have been made by President Obama and his administration over the past weeks in a seeming preparation of “sequestration”: $85 billion in across- the- board program cutbacks that kick in March 1. While Republicans and Democrats alike are using sequestration as amunition against the fiscal policies of the other, it has become the most successful recent attempt at further dividing the American electorate.

Several items of importance are missing from the message of mainstream media. Here are some to consider:

1. President Obama himself created the idea of sequestration, using it as leverage to push a once- hailed Super Committee to agree on spending cuts as a part of the Budget Control Act of 2011. The Super Committee failed to reach any agreement during those talks in 2011.

2. Sequestration has nothing to do with cutting programs or budgets. Nothing. It only means smaller increases for programs over the next year.

3. No current spending is going to be cut; the sequestration merely reduces $85 billion for 2013- and a total of $1.1 trillion over ten years- in increases that would otherwise have taken effect.

4. Even with sequestration spending increases will total $3.54 trillion in 2013 and in 2016, $4.4 trillion.

5. Despite the Budget Control Act of 2011, government spending has increased 98 percent despite America’s population increasing by only 11 percent over the past year.

These five points are nearly as terrifying as some of the claims made by the White House. What’s worse is the inaction of our Congress. On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate quietly marked its 1,400th day since having passed a budget for the federal government, proving this Congress has proven incapable of striking any kind of bargain with folks from the other side of the aisle.