Okay, since a commenter on NRO asked for this specific data set, I decided to just get out Excel and do it. The graph shows the spending totals for fiscal years 2007-2011 (2012 isn’t available yet except as estimates, and I’d rather work with actual figures), compared with the sequester, and, well, it speaks for itself.

Here’s the raw numbers, for those number geeks who want to play with them themselves:

Spending by year, in billions of dollars (data from Government Printing Office)

2007	4,289.5
2008	4,671.8
2009	5,169.9
2010	5,077.7
2011	5,294.3

And the sequester, according to House Democrats (question 3 on the FAQ), is $110 billion, evenly split between defense and non-defense cuts, $55 billion from each.

Kinda makes all the sturm und drang from the Democrats seem a little overblown, doesn’t it?