Reply #8: Here is a Washington Post article that describes which will be cut by the trigger

[Mass]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-defense-cuts-arent-the-biggest-problem-with-the-trigger/2011/11/21/gIQAyORTiN_blog.html

Yet there’s nowhere near the same anxiety about the cuts to domestic discretionary spending that will also bite down once the supercommittee chucks in the towel. Arguably, there should be. Budget experts are already warning that these cuts to domestic spending — totaling $294 billion over 10 years, starting with a 7.8 percent cut in 2013, and coming on top of the spending caps in August’s debt-ceiling deal — could have even harsher consequences, both for everyday Americans and for the ability of the United States to maintain a thriving, competitive economy in the years ahead.

“This isn’t just a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington who are going to have fewer jobs,” says Isabel Sawhill, a former associate director of the Office of Management and Budget now at Brookings, of the cuts. “This is going to affect public safety, it’s going to affect low-income people, it’s going to affect veterans’ health care. We can’t just wave our arms and pretend it won’t have an impact on people’s lives.”

First, let’s define terms. “Non-defense discretionary spending” has been known to glaze over eyes and induce snores whenever it’s thrown around. Which is part of why politicians like to cut it. Everyone knows what Social Security is. Everyone knows what Medicare does. But what about domestic discretionary spending? Well, it’s anything that falls into Congress’s appropriations budgets each year. It’s the Veterans Health Administration. It’s medical research at the National Institutes for Health. It’s low-income housing assistance. It’s the Coast Guard. It’s highway spending. It’s EPA clean-air enforcement.

To make this more intuitive, Sawhill has picked through domestic discretionary spending and sorted all of the programs into four broad categories. There’s “competitiveness,” which includes things like energy and transportation infrastructure and R&D. There’s “low-income programs” like housing vouchers or nutrition assistance for women with infants. There’s “public safety”: border control, food inspections, etc. And then there’s care for veterans.

It confirms what Kerry said, that the lower income people will be touched disproportionately. But sadly, nobody cares. All that matters is the middle class.