The sequester is nothing but a game of political mudslinging that leaves the American people facedown in the pit of oozing black sludge.

Whether the $85.4 billion of across-the-board cuts — $1.2 trillion over 10 years — will actually have the apocalyptic effect some Washington suits claim is not the real concern. The sequester’s sole purpose is to pose such a harsh punishment that both sides of the aisle would be forced to come together in agreement.

So why were Americans not relieved of this game of legislative chicken?

Because Republicans didn’t want to save America of its burden, and President Barack Obama let them.

The sequester was conceived by some White House ideologue who actually had the audacity to believe Democrats and Republicans would rather come to an agreement than punish their constituents. The nerve of some people, huh?

For conservatives, the sequester — which could cost as many as 2.14 million American jobs — was a win-win situation.

Either:

A) The cuts actually aid the economy, and the Grand Old Party gets bragging rights for the next half century, or

B) The cuts tank the economy on Obama’s watch.

I’d like to believe Republicans thought the former option would be the case.

However, after seeing a slew of Internet attack ads geared toward connecting House and Senate Democrats to the cuts and every Republican speaking in the past month doing so in front of billboards with the phrase “Obamaquester,” all signs point to the latter. Republicans wouldn’t connect the sequester with their political opponents if they thought it would work.

Republicans proposed legislation that would give some direction to the cuts instead of letting them run bull-in-a-china-shop-style through half of Washington.

True, but it was nothing more than political gesturing that conservatives knew no Democrat would touch. This way, Republicans get to say they at least tried while the president played the blame game.

House Republicans proposed a plan that cuts revenue without raising taxes, but the main act of the Toomey-Inhofe Bill’s political song-and-dance slashes Obama’s healthcare bill along with a slew of other entitlement programs.

Obama and his party have to begin seeing entitlement reform as a reasonable inevitability instead of the first knot in the noose. However, drastic cuts would be the party’s executioner.

The proposal also suggested Obama hand-selected which cuts would take place. However, restrictions in the bill limited the areas of the budget the president could cut.

This would be the equivalent of Obama volunteering for the

firing squad. It would put the entirety of blame from the cuts on his face alone with every single department included beginning an offensive in battleground states from sea to shining sea — all the while the GOP sits back and says, “Hey, we didn’t make the cuts.”

Even Republican Sen. John McCain criticized the bill for giving congressional budgetary powers to the executive branch.

The only proposal anywhere near the center of the aisle was the Simpson-Bowles plan that called for $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade — about three-fourths coming from spending cuts and another $600 billion in revenue increases — as well as moderate reforms to healthcare and the reduction or elimination of certain tax breaks.

One of the biggest disappointments in the entire debacle was Obama’s utter lack of executive leadership within his own party.

He clearly thought Republicans would agree to anything rather than allow cuts to the military. And when they didn’t, he froze. What’s worse is he began to try and align the sequester with Republicans instead of trying to fix the problem.

Congress should have been locked in the chamber for a month before these cuts actually took effect.

Republican leaders shouldn’t have been given the opportunity to skip town to avoid a vote. The heating in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office should have been turned to Sub-Saharan before this punishment came to fruition.

What’s worse is Reid limited both parties to only one proposal each. I’m sorry, but isn’t the point of a democracy to have choices? Maybe there’s more than one idea that could be beneficial to our economic crisis.

Why is America being punished because 535 men and women in Washington can’t agree on anything?

Because 535 men and women in Washington care more about watching their opponents lose than seeing America win.

Mike Gegenheimer is a 20-year-old mass communication sophomore from New Orleans.