Courtesy Photo­Image

Photo by Sen. Tom Coburn Debt as of 1:45 p.m. Saturday

A sweeping package of automatic spending cuts went into motion Friday within the swollen federal government.

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The so-called "sequester" amounts to $85 billion of across-the-board cuts. They are the best Washington D.C. officials could muster during years of efforts to rein in runaway federal spending.

Federal departments, including Homeland Security, the Pentagon, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Education, have all prepared to notify employees that they will have to take one unpaid day off per week through the end of the year as part of a deal, according to an ABC news report.

The House of Representatives blames the Senate. The Republicans blame the Senate and the White House, and the White House blames Congress.

"They refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit," President Barack Obama said. "We can and must replace these cuts with a more balanced approach that asks something from everybody."

The cuts were originally slated for $109 billion this year, but after a fiscal-cliff income tax increase was set in January, the sequester was postponed for two months, so it now will amount to $85 billion over the next 10 months.

Nondefense programs will be cut by nine percent. Defense programs will be cut by 13 percent.

If carried out over 10 years (as designed), the sequester will amount to $1.2 trillion in total, ABC reported HERE.