Of budgets and blunt instruments: how little-known left-right cooperation on defense brought you sequester

The Pentagon's budget, after growing 75 percent in the decade after 9/11, comprises half of all US discretionary spending. Its size and sanctity was supposed to be the immovable object — the Maginot Line, for the military history buffs — that staved off sequestration. Neither Republicans nor Democrats, the conventional wisdom went, would want to risk the wrath of the military and the attack ads of the other side by allowing the defense budget to decline.