If you take Warren Buffett's long view, sequestration looks more like just one of many painful -- and perhaps inevitable -- moments in the the quest to drive down America's deficit.
"We are going to bring down spending and we are going to bring up revenues," the Berkshire Hathaway CEO said in a Monday morning interview with CNBC's Squawk Box, referring to U.S. efforts to curb the federal deficit. "We may [just] get there in fits and starts and everybody may scream each time we do it."
With regards to the most recent attempt to cut $1.2 trillion from the deficit, known as sequestration, Buffett said "we may be doing it in a meat ax way." The process, set in motion to force a reduction in spending after a congressional committee failed to find enough in savings, could eliminate 750,000 jobs in 2013 alone and decrease jobless benefits for the more than 3.8 million Americans who have been unemployed for more than six months.
Buffett pointed out that this isn't the first time Washington has chosen a wide-sweeping approach to tackle economic issues, likening the sequester to January's expiration of the payroll tax cuts. Both of those policies, Buffett said, "hit all across the board on poor people and people of moderate means."
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