By Imara Jones

The fight for economic justice passed a grim milestone this week. On June 1 sequestration—the automatic spending cuts passed by Congress and implemented by the president—marked a second month of pain for tens of millions, with no end in sight.

The cruel irony is that there was never reason for the cuts. A pivotal study used to justify sequestration was entirely discredited as failing basic mathematical standards only weeks after the drastic cuts began. Yet rather than retrench and reevaluate, Washington continues on the same dangerous, evidence-free economic path while Americans suffer needlessly. After only eight weeks of what’s supposed to be 120 months of budget cuts, sequestration shows just how damaging bad information in the wrong hands can be.

In order to see the scale of what went wrong, it’s important to first review the scope of the harm caused.

There are the big trends: Economic growth last quarter was lower than forecast in part because of sequestration. Unemployment remains high and job growth held back by the newly imposed austerity measures. Consumer confidence, a key indicator for where our economy is headed, has been schizophrenic since the beginning of the year as individuals attempt to make sense of how the cuts will impact them.

But while these top line numbers are unsettling, the localized impact on millions of lives in countless communities is even more shocking and absurd. Thousands of Medicare cancer patients are being denied treatment because of sequestration. These are people already in the fight of their lives, and American austerity has made it that much more difficult. As Jeff Vaicra, head of an oncology practice in New York told the Washington Post, “A lot of us are in disbelief.”

That sense of disbelief extends to Head Start—the early education program for children of the working poor—where 70,000 pre-schoolers are on track to be denied a place. According to Education Week, one program in Alton, Ill., near St. Louis will have to eliminate half the slots in one of its Head Start Centers.

Across the federal government, from health to unemployment benefits to scientific research the story is much the same. The only agencies exempt are the Defense Department and the Federal Aviation Administration—which houses the nation’s air traffic controllers—due to special lobbying and powerful friends. For all the rest, it’s a grim tally.

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