For Congress, the month of February ended with as much headway on budgetary issues as it began with: absolutely none.

The sequester, which was an automatic budget cut, came into effect in the beginning of March, chopping $85.4 billion from the defense budget and domestic programs.

This is just another example of the Democrats and Republicans refusing to get along for long enough to fix the drastic issues facing the nation.

It’s time for both parties to stop bickering and come to a fair decision on what needs to be cut from the national budget.

The sequester cuts are supposed to be as undesirable as possible in an effort to push the parties into avoiding further indecision of budgetary issues.

The biggest problem with the sequester cuts is that they are arbitrary, rather than structured cuts to excess spending.

According to The Washington Post, the sequester will cut funding to the Centers for Disease Control, FEMA, special education, airport security, public house support, and other valuable and necessary programs.

The true purpose of the sequester was to force politicians to act before it took effect.

Unfortunately, they did not.

Now the country has to suffer from these terrible cuts, while still fighting off a multi-trillion dollar deficit.

Congress could have evaded this had they decided to cut programs that are not as essential to the nation.

It is clear that congressmen would rather stick to their political guns and stand firm as the country crumbles around them.

Instead of understanding that the sequester was meant to spur cooperation for a better budget, and ultimately be avoided,  politicians simply fought with one another because they could not get their way. Partisanship won over the good of the country.

Speaker of the House John Boehner said on March 3, “We’ve known about this for 16 months. And yet even today, there’s no plan from Senate Democrats or the White House to replace the sequester.”

But according to Politifact,  both Obama and Senate Democrats have proposed plans to cut spending and raise revenue.

This is an example of the inability of our politicians to work together, even in the face of extremely undesirable cuts.

The sequester was a bad idea from the start, but it was always an issue that could have been avoided by cooperation on Capitol Hill.

Sadly, politicians choose to continue fighting and now our country is going to suffer.