( CNN ) -- As any ex-jock can tell you , any time you try exercising a muscle that has gone unused for a decade or more , something predictable happens : It barks like hell . This is what we 're seeing in this last pathetic run-up to the forced spending cuts agreed to by Congress and the president in July 2011 as a fail-safe in case the federal government could n't agree on a totally necessary but politically difficult settlement to address the country 's long-term fiscal unsustainability . `` Hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose access to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings , '' President Barack Obama warned . ( PolitiFact verdict : half true . `` There is no indication that Americans will lose their insurance coverage or access to all primary care because of the sequester , '' said PolitiFact , but added `` pretty close to 'hundreds of thousands ' '' could lose flu vaccinations and cancer screenings . ) A trio of Republican senators ( John McCain , Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte ) jointly bemoaned `` the calamitous effects that budget sequestration would have on our nation 's economy and security . '' Politicians have been trying to outdo each other in deploying what the neoliberal Washington Monthly founder Charles Peters coined in 1976 as the `` firemen first '' principle -- the notion that `` the public will support ( the Clever Bureaucrat 's ) valiant fight against the budget reduction only if essential services are endangered . Thus , C.B . always picks on teachers , policemen , firemen first . '' So an already rattled nation is being spooked by horror stories of three-hour airport security lines , delayed background check for gun purchases and criminals running freely through the streets . All this for a spending cut that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will be around $ 44 billion in 2013 , a tiny sliver of the federal budget . Imagine the squeals if it included significant cuts . Zelizer : GOP will get blame for cuts . No doubt there will be those who find such fear-mongering persuasive . But for the rest of us , it suggests a rather pressing and relevant question : Just what , precisely , did we get from doubling the cost of the federal government between 2000 and 2010 ? If the bureaucrats ca n't produce an explanation for the price increase of government , then they should not expect their budgets to be rubber-stamped by an already suffering public . So the squawking you hear is from a government money-machine having difficulty adapting to a political universe that no longer accepts automatic annual increases . And we 'll keep hearing it until the moment politicians have the courage to align government expenditures within miles of revenue . The Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan , who died in January , warned us three decades ago about the `` permanent disconnect '' between revenue and spending , brought about by politicians scared of charging taxpayers full freight for government goodies . Opinion : The fairy tale on spending cuts . `` The attractiveness of financing spending by debt issue to the elected politicians should be obvious , '' he wrote . `` Borrowing allows spending to be made that will yield immediate political payoffs without the incurring of any immediate political cost . '' We are living with the results : National debt greater than 100 % of annual gross domestic product and no end in sight , just as the baby boomers stop working and start sucking down expensive federal entitlements . Even if borrowing costs remain at their historic lows in perpetuity , this kind of debt overhang is more dangerous than any mild bureaucratic shuffle necessitated by the 1 % trim . Why ? In their controversial April 2012 National Bureau for Economic Research working paper , economists Carmen M. Reinhart , Vincent R. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff concluded that when countries carry debt of more than 90 % of GDP for five or more consecutive years , economic growth gets chopped down by more than a whole percentage point each year for decades . What 's the best method for reversing a debt crisis ? In a 2009 paper ( PDF ) , Harvard economists Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna examined more than 100 debt-reduction efforts worldwide since 1970 , and asserted that `` spending cuts are much more effective than tax increases in stabilizing the debt and avoiding economic downturns . '' The authors found `` several episodes in which spending cuts adopted to reduce deficits have been associated with economic expansions rather than recessions . '' Opinion : Cuts will turn off voters GOP is courting . Taxpayers should n't be fearing the forced spending cuts , they should be fearing that the cuts do n't go nearly far enough . And politicians should realize that short-term debt service and long-term entitlements are going to keep shrinking the money left over for doling out goodies . Like other things that ca n't go on forever , fiscal irresponsibility wo n't . Time to get those muscles in shape . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Matt Welch .
Matt Welch : Politicians have been talking about dire consequences of the spending cuts . He says Congress and President agreed on them in the deal , and they 're necessary . He asks : What have we gotten from huge increase in federal government 's budget ? Welch : Look at 100 % of GDP , with boomers getting ready to queue up for benefits .