SNL on the Sequester: And What the Internet's Saying About It (Video)

"Saturday Night Live" took aim at President Barack Obama and the sequester over the weekend with an opening skit that parodied the president's $85 billion worth of federal budget cuts that went into effect Friday night.

"As you probably know, last night I signed an executive order authorizing $85 billion in federal budget cuts," President Barack Obama (played by Jay Pharoah) said. "Now, most Americans still don’t understand what this whole sequester really means. I could explain it in financial terms or in human terms but, since I really have no idea about how money works or the budgets work, I'll go with human terms instead."

(The sequester calls for nondefense programs to be cut by 9 percent, and defense programs to be cut by 13 percent, and would affect areas like air traffic control, meat inspections, and aircraft carrier deployments. If carried out for 10 years as designed, it would reportedly amount to $1.2 trillion. Republicans have criticized Obama for flip-flopping on the plan he reportedly thought up.)

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"We're all going to feel the pain from these cuts, even in the White House," said Pharoah as Obama. "From now on, my wife Michelle will only do four television appearances a week down from her usual 75."

On "SNL," Obama was surrounded by the men and women who would be affected by the cuts. There was an air traffic controller ("We no longer have full body scanners at the security lines so were asking everyone to take a photo down the front of your pants and just text that to us"), a border patrol agent ("We're gonna have to let every 10th Mexican just run across the border"), and a NASA astronaut ("Thanks to the budget cuts, our space helmets will no longer have glass in the front so when we go outside to repair the ship the we'll just have to hold our breath").

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The skit ended with a rendition of "YMCA" by cast members dressed as the Village People.

Funny! #SNL finally criticizing Obama on fear mongering+governance by crises. C Inner city teacher sequester reply. whitehousedossier.com/2013/03/03/big…

— Crystal Wright (@GOPBlackChick) March 3, 2013

So, the SNL skit about the sequester is pretty funny. They paint Obama as out of touch & mock his scare tactics shar.es/jyf2U

— Francesca Chambers (@fran_chambers) March 4, 2013

#SNL skit on sequester. worked in scene with the Village People. YMCA. Yep. Even got the Indian in there. washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/…

— Jodi Rave (@JodiRave) March 4, 2013

"In 9 months you won't even remember this sequester happened. Why? Because there will be a way worse financial crisis to deal with." #SNL

— James Heath (@jamesheath) March 3, 2013

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