Discussing the sequester on the March 5 edition of NBC's Today, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow compared it to Prohibition, when the government hoped that, “to stop people from drinking, they would put poison in industrial alcohol. They didn’t do anything to stop the underlying problem of people wanting to drink, and so what they did was poison a lot of people. This is the same kind of thing. It’s supposed to be aversion therapy. It’s supposed to be so awful we won’t do it. But we’ve gone and done it anyway. It’s self-imposed crisis.”
Co-host Savannah Guthrie agreed with Maddow's metaphor: “And part of the effect though is this poison, to borrow your metaphor, it’s not a poison that kills you overnight. Apparently it’s a slow, rolling poison.”