A worthless institution

In fairness, the modern Congress is reflective of the nation's lack of discipline in matters financial.  Still, if you're going to claim to be "leaders," you should be able to do better than this:

Republican and Democratic congressional leaders are weighing whether to delay automatic federal spending cuts until March 2013, according to a House aide and industry officials who were briefed on the discussions.

The $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts over a decade, half of which would affect the Defense Department, are scheduled to begin in January 2013. At the same time, lawmakers must decide what to do about income tax cuts and other tax breaks scheduled to expire at the end of the year.
Leaders in both chambers are discussing whether to propose a catch-all bill that would delay the automatic cuts, fund the government through March or later and temporarily extend the George W. Bush-era tax cuts and other tax laws, said the House aide and industry officials, who asked to speak on condition of anonymity. 

The "automatic cuts" were nothing more than a pretense of Congress 'forcing' itself to make the tough choices that it, as a body, is simply incapable of making.  Meanwhile, the voters keep returning the same people back to D.C.

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result... that's the definition of something, I think.