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Unless Congress acts, across-the-board spending cuts scheduled to take effect March 1 will be felt throughout the government. Some of the most visible effects will be noticed by air travelers.

Officials predict that cutbacks at the Federal Aviation Administration could lead to takeoff delays and fewer flights overall.

The FAA's work is done largely out of public view, in airport control towers and regional radar centers, in hangars and workshops. But if the spending cuts, known in Washington-speak as sequestration, start taking effect on schedule, the importance of that backstage work will move front and center.

Danny Werfel of the Office of Management and Budget said at a Senate hearing last week that the sequester will take a toll at the FAA.

"FAA is going to face a cut of roughly $600 million under sequester," Werfel said. "A vast majority of their 47,000 employees will be furloughed for one day per pay period for the rest of the year, and, as importantly, this is going to reduce air traffic levels across the country, causing delays and disruptions for all travelers."

In a letter to agency employees, FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said the temporary layoffs would require "a reduction in FAA services to levels that can be safely managed by remaining staff."

Marion Blakey, who used to head the FAA and is now CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association, says she agrees cutbacks will not go unnoticed.

"If sequestration goes into effect, level-headed people all over this town, all over Washington, are saying, 'Yes, it will have a major effect on the aviation system,' " she says. "And this isn't doomsday; this isn't some sort of science-fiction plot that we're all talking about. This is reality, and it's reality coming up next month."

Blakey says more than 2,000 air traffic controllers will be furloughed at one time or another, and there will be ripple effects.

"It's one of those things that when you start cutting back on service, it affects even community airports, because, after all, they don't have the flights coming in," she says. "The landing fees, the concessions, the parking lot — all of those sources of revenue suffer."

Blakey says that could mean an annual loss of $1 billion in tax revenues.

It's not only controllers who face furloughs. There are thousands of FAA technicians, who fix equipment such as radar and navigation systems.

It's All Politics

Whose Sequester Is It Anyway?

Maximina Hernandez says she begged her 23-year old son, Dionicio, to give up his job as a police officer in a suburb of Monterrey. Rival drug cartels have been battling in the northern Mexican city for years.

But he told her being a police officer was in his blood, a family tradition. He was detailed to guard the town's mayor.

In May 2007, on his way to work, two men wearing police uniforms stopped Dionicio on a busy street, pulled him from his car and drove him away. That same day, the mayor's other two bodyguards were also abducted. Witnesses say the kidnappers wore uniforms of an elite anti-drug police unit. The three men haven't been seen since.

'It's So Bleak'

At a weekly meeting at a downtown Monterrey human-rights center, relatives of the disappeared hold hands and pray. There is no shortage of heartbreaking stories here, says Sister Consuelo Morales Elizondo.

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With immigration policy in the news again, I asked three economists dream big: If you could create any immigration policy for the U.S., what would it be? Here's what they said.

1. The Best and the Brightest

Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, would give out more visas to highly-skilled workers: scientists, engineers, computer programmers and doctors.

In this universe, with fewer low-skill immigrants, low-skilled labor would be more expensive. So food would cost a bit more. Childcare might, too. There could be fewer restaurants. On the other hand, having more doctors could mean that really expensive things like medical care would be cheaper.

2. The Highest Bidder

The problem with favoring highly-skilled workers is defining "highly skilled." Our government already tries to do that and it's a mess, according to UC Davis economist Giovanni Peri.

In Peri's ideal world, the US would auction the visas off to the employers who were willing to pay the most, he says. That way, employers could determine which would-be immigrants would add the most to the U.S. economy.

Peri does think there should be space for low-skilled immigrants, so in his dream world there would be separate visa auctions for high- and low-skilled workers.

3. Let 'Em In.

Alex Nowrasteh, a self-described libertarian at the Cato Institute, says we should almost everybody in.

"My dream setup would be a system where only criminals, suspected terrorists, and those with serious communicable diseases like drug-resistant tuberculosis are barred from coming to the United States to live and work," Nowrasteh says.

Open borders were the law of the land for almost 100 years of American history, he points out. He says between 50 and 100 million people might move to the U.S. if we re-instated those rules now. He says that's fine. Compared to Europe, the U.S. is a big, empty country.

The movie Beasts of the Southern Wild is a fairy tale of a film. It might not seem to have much in common with documentaries about evangelical Christians in Uganda or the billionaire Koch brothers. But these films were all funded by a not-for-profit group called Cinereach. It was started by a couple of film school graduates who are still in their 20s. And now, with Beasts, it has a nomination for Best Picture at this year's Oscars.

Cinereach funded almost all of the $1.5 million budget for Beasts of the Southern Wild, the immersive art-house film about a child who's figuratively and literally adrift in Louisiana swamp country. Named Hushpuppy, and played by youngest-ever Best Actress nominee Quvenzhane Wallis, she vows to survive: "They think we're all gonna drown," she says. "But we ain't going nowhere."

The movie has earned more than $12 million, along with multiple awards and Oscar nominations.

Michael Raisler, at 27 years old, is one of the Best Picture nominee's producers and the creative director of Cinereach, which he founded with Philipp Engelhorn when the two were classmates at New York University's film school. They found that they shared a love for movies and a passion for social change. "Our key goal is to support what we call 'vital stories artfully told,' " he says.

As they learned about the film business, Raisler and Engelhorn learned that the money didn't go to the good movies; it went to the movies that would make more money. Engelhorn decided he wanted his film production company to be separate and apart from worries about commercial viability: "We're not protecting a potential upside or profit potential; we're protecting the vision."

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