As you may have heard, the Republicans' refusal to discontinue the hostage crisis around the sequester has led to the across-the-board budget cuts kicking in today. What you may not have heard is that the sequester actually increases the the public debt-to-GDP ratio, Andrew Fieldhouse of the Economic Policy Institute points out. 

The sequester is obviously supposed to reduce the deficit. But it would actually increase the national debt as a share of the economy. Fieldhouse explains that this ratio is what economists look at when determining a country's fiscal health.

The takeaway? Sequestration not only holds back the economic recovery and endangers long-term economic growth, but it also actually worsens our fiscal health. Repealing sequestration, on the other hand, would improve our fiscal health by shrinking the debt as a share of the economy.

Working families are asking Congress to repeal sequestration, protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from benefit cuts and close tax loopholes for Wall St. and the richest 2%.