I love hearing President Obama's stories of doom and gloom if the "sequester" goes into effect: $85 billion ripped from the federal government's $3.8 trillion bare-bones budget. To hear Obama tell it, the military will be gutted, only skeleton police and fire forces will remain, there will be deep cuts in education and social services, and throngs of jobless citizens roaming the streets.

Get real: We are talking only a 2 percent cut. That is what most families got ripped from their household budgets when the payroll tax went up 2 percent in January. Of course, this only hit people with jobs, so the impact was minimal on most Obama supporters. Look, $85 billion is a lot of money, but it is only what the government gave to one company, AIG, in the '08 bailout.

The spending problem is worse than I thought if our politicians are making such a fuss over what amounts to only a 2 percent budget cut, the same cut they thought shouldn't worry the average working household in January. Where was the outrage then?

Our leaders in Washington are still spending more than $1 trillion each year that they don't have. The government takes in only a little over $2.8 trillion annually; the annual budget is over $3.8 trillion! If I spent 25 percent more each month than I took in, my wife would have me get psychiatric help.

Maybe that is what our politicians in Washington need, both Democrats and Republicans: professional help for their addiction to overspending, and maybe a requirement that each member of the Congress and the executive branch take a basic economics course.

Gary E. Neighbors

Locust Grove