Rachel Maddow On 'Today' About Sequester: 'We Invent Our Own Crises' (VIDEO)

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Rachel Maddow appeared on the "Today" show on Tuesday to discuss the sequester and criticized the government for creating its own problems.

The sequester, which went into effect late last week, totaled $85 billion in budget cuts. Maddow likened the cuts to the government poisoning industrial alcohol during the prohibition era. Maddow said, "They didn't want to fix the underlying problem of people wanting to drink, so what they did was poison a lot of people!" She added, "This is the same kind of thing. It's supposed to be aversion therapy. It's supposed to be so awful we won't do it. But we've gone and done it anyway."

While Maddow discussed how the sequester cuts were designed to be harmful and will negatively impact the economy, she pointed to an overall governance problem as the larger issue of the sequestration. "The bigger problem is crisis-to-crisis-to-crisis is not the way the biggest country on earth should govern itself," Maddow said. "Other countries spend their time trying to build up their resilience. We, instead, invent our own crises."