To hear US President Barack Obama tell it this week, the budget sequestration – the automatic spending cuts that are due to commence tomorrow – will decimate the government. Each party is blaming the other, as if something new and unexpected was about to begin. Many of the cuts are indeed ill-advised – but the fact is that from the start of his presidency Mr Obama has planned a steep reduction in discretionary spending as a share of national income.

Each year he has put a budget on the table calling for a sharp decline in discretionary spending as a share of gross domestic product in 2012 and beyond. Most of his supporters have been unaware of the contradiction between this and his rhetoric about increasing public investments in America’s future.

The administration is now vigorously blaming the Republicans for the pending cuts. Yet the level of spending for fiscal year 2013 under the sequestration will be nearly the same as Mr Obama called for in the draft budget presented in mid-2012. So deep were the proposed cuts in discretionary spending that the budget narrative pointed out that the plan would “bring domestic discretionary spending to its lowest level as a share of the economy since the Eisenhower administration”.