Slate’s Michael Moran writes: If nothing else of note
emerged from the third and final presidential debate of this election cycle,
let’s at least thank Mitt Romney for saying a word that has been notably absent
from this contest: “sequestration.”
It’s an ugly word—a typical euphemism of the Washington
ruling class. It should not be confused with castration, though economically
its effects on the American economy might be similar. Nor does it mean, really,
what the word implies. To sequester is to take temporary possession of—to
seize—with the intention of returning it. The Latin root, sequestrate, means
“to surrender for safekeeping.”
That’s not at all what’s going on here. Sequestration,
defined in terms of the current debate, is the result of the Budget Control Act
of 2011—itself another silly euphemism. A more apt definition would be
something like this: “To light a fuse of an economic explosion that provides a
two-year smokescreen for political cowardice until after the next election,
when we will come up with some new way to pretend this is all the fault of the
other political party…..”
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