# Sequestration **Automatic, across-the-board spending cuts** triggered when Congress breaches a statutory limit — the budget's enforcement hammer. If lawmakers exceed a spending cap or pass deficit-increasing legislation that [[PAYGO]] doesn't offset, the cuts fire *automatically*, applied as a uniform percentage to most accounts, with no discretion about which programs are hit. ## Where it comes from - The **Budget Control Act of 2011** set discretionary caps and a sequester to enforce them — the mechanism behind the 2013 "sequester" austerity round. - **Statutory PAYGO** carries its own sequester trigger: deficit-increasing mandatory legislation that isn't offset can force automatic cuts (which would hit [[Medicare]] and other programs). ## Why it rarely fully fires Because the cuts are indiscriminate and politically intolerable, Congress almost always **waives or turns them off** rather than let them hit — most dramatically after the [[Tax Cuts and Jobs Act]] and the [[Big Beautiful Bill]], whose deficit effects would have triggered Medicare sequesters that Congress then voted separately to prevent. See [[Baseline and Scoring]]. ## The RWKB angle Sequestration is austerity-by-autopilot — designed as a threat so painful nobody would let it happen, which is exactly why it mostly doesn't. Its real function is rhetorical: a "forcing mechanism" invoked to pressure the other side, then defused when it's your own bill that pulls the trigger. The same selective-discipline pattern as [[PAYGO]]. ## Related - [[PAYGO]] · [[Baseline and Scoring]] · [[Discretionary vs Mandatory Spending]] - [[Tax Cuts and Jobs Act]] · [[Big Beautiful Bill]] · [[Budget Hub]]