Another week passes, and again, Congress makes another irrational decision concerning the future of our economy. This time, it’s the sequester, quite possibly one of the dumbest policy decisions made by our representatives. I certainly agree with President Barack Obama when he says the sequester is an unnecessary self-inflicted wound.

Sen. Rand Paul, however, asserts that Obama has no ground for complaint, as he was in fact the one who proposed the sequester. But this shies away from the facts of the debt-ceiling crisis of 2011. While it is true that Obama proposed the idea of sequestration, the plan was forged in order to force Congress, and more specifically the House Republicans, into negotiating a deal on the debt ceiling.

Obama buckled, and for that he does share a portion of the blame for the sequester, but the blame game has never gotten anyone anywhere — well, at least this applies outside of modern politics. Right now, it shouldn’t matter who proposed the idea and for what reasons — it’s a bad idea, and no deal was made to stop it.

This entire debacle is merely a fabricated crisis, created by the debt and deficit hawks who circle the policymakers above, stymieing our attempts at tackling the real issue in our economy — unemployment.

Besides, sequester will have little effect on shrinking our deficit, while at the same time it could drastically harm our economy. It will hardly appease the hawks, especially ones of the likes of Paul. Even worse, as recent projections have shown, the sequester will likely cost us 700,000 jobs by the end of 2014.

The fact of the matter is that our debt is at a lower percentage of GDP than it was during World War II. In addition, the two-thirds of the debt we owe is to ourselves. Even the debt we owe to foreign nations is insignificant, given the fact that every dollar we owe in foreign debt is backed by around 89 cents of debt owed to us by foreign countries.

Our debt would be a real problem if the people who purchase our debt lose confidence in our ability to pay it back and, consequently, interest rates skyrocket. Yet, as of now, our interest rates are at historic lows.

While in the long run, the escalation of our debt to risky levels is largely dangerous for the economy, more attention must be paid to our current unemployment situation. As long as debt grows slower than our tax base, we should be fine, but if our tax base diminishes because of silly plans such as the sequester, the economy will never recover.

As I’ve pointed out, tackling unemployment is much more of an imperative, and it could help to alleviate our long-term debt problems with increased tax revenue. The sequester dilemma that we’re in right now runs counter to our understanding of macroeconomic policies, both fiscal and monetary.

We must induce demand. By inducing demand, businesses will require more workers to satisfy production needs. Because of this, the newly employed will have more money to spend on other businesses. Unemployment consequently decreases. Once unemployment decreases and the economy is strong again, we boost tax revenues and save money for the next drop in the business cycle.

Accomplishing this task will require our government to spend money to boost aggregate demand. While it sounds counterintuitive, it actually works. But the debt hawks insist that we must cut our way to fiscal prosperity. Leave that to the Eurozone, which has played witness to the exacerbations of austerity.

Though I viciously disagree with the Republicans on the issue of our debt, I am even more perturbed by the actions of the Democrats. The Democratic Party can string together such powerful and eloquent messages on the growing social disparities of our country, but they are largely pushovers when it comes to macroeconomic policy.

It has become something of an adage for the Republicans to say that the Democrats don’t know anything about macroeconomics. The odd thing is that this may be true, but the Democrats are, ironically, still correct. Of course, they win by default. The debt hawks of the Republican Party in this specific circumstance are just so blatantly wrong.

The Democratic Party needs to reorient its platform to include the quantitative complexities of monetary and fiscal policy. That may be our economy’s only hope.

I suppose none of this matters now. The sequester has already kicked in. On this trajectory, more weeks will pass with more politicians misinterpreting the real problem — unemployment.

Fix unemployment, then worry about the debt. Not the opposite.

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Michael Glawe is a junior in mathematics and economics from New Ulm, Minn.