With the most dysfunctional Congress in modern history in charge of its funding, the United States military faces the very real prospect of 10-percent cuts to its budget each year for the next 10 years if legislators continue to remain deadlocked on a solution to the federal deficit.

“Sequestration” is the name for the process by which $50 billion would be cut from the $531-billion Department of Defense budget each year for a decade in the absence of a substantive solution to the deficit. The idea behind sequestration was that putting 10 percent of the defense budget on the line would raise the stakes of deficit negotiations to such a level that a so-called “supercommitee” of congressional leaders would be politically and morally shamed into reaching a compromise to hack away at the federal deficit.

But it didn’t work out that way, and the very nature of the threat reveals its political motivations, and exposes the political brinksmanship that carries the day in Washington, D.C. Is it likely that there’s 10 percent waste in the Department of Defense budget? Of course it’s likely, but it’s hard to believe that the Pentagon is the only place in Washington, D.C., where a government agency is wasting taxpayer funds. It’s unfathomable that 10-percent savings could not be found at the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services and in just about every federal agency with a taxpayer-backed credit card.

But legislators chose to ante the budget of only the Department of Defense in their deficit showdown. The threat of an across-the board sequestration would have encountered serious objections by legislators who’ve made a career out of expanding government, but it would have guaranteed a real effort at compromise by supercommittee members of both parties, and it would have made a deficit solution all but certain.

Instead, congressional liberals — many of whom hold the military in disdain and believe it should be cut, anyway — have little in the way of skin in the game. The defense budget stands to be cut no matter what happens with the stalemated supercommittee, but the rest of the federal government will just continue to grow.

Liberal reticence over spending money on defense has always been hard to reconcile with the reality of a world in which terrorists and belligerent states pronounce their hope for America’s demise on the Internet and on international cable news shows. And holding onto the idea that defending Americans is a concept with partisan political motivations requires a willful ignorance of the fact that enemies of the U.S. espouse hatred for the nation as a whole, not for its red states or its blue states.

Here in Hampton Roads, where the presence of the American armed forces permeates our society, most of us feel a special kinship with the military, whether we have served or not. We sense the dangers faced by our soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen and we respond — whether liberal or conservative — with heartfelt appreciation and a desire to provide them with the best tools, equipment and support we can afford. Many of us yearn for a more efficient and accountable approach to military spending, but we could not imagine the benefit of limiting that drive for efficiency and accountability only to military spending.

But most of us don’t serve in Congress, and most of us don’t live in the political circles transcribed around Washington, D.C., where something as important as the safety of American citizens can be put up for ante by legislators who really could not care less what number comes up when the dice are rolled. Most of us will never be able to fathom the faithlessness that’s required for such a cynical approach to governing. And if we’re lucky, we’ll never suffer the evil consequences of that cynicism.