Senate GOP expected to filibuster Democratic plan to avoid sequester as House GOP twiddles thumbs

GOP preparing to do what they do best: Nothing With automatic budget cuts set to kick in tomorrow, here's a really short version of today's episode of Sequester Theater: In the Senate, Democrats and Republicans will hold dueling votes on plans to avert the sequester. The Democratic plan will likely get more than 50 votes, and the Republican plan certainly won't. Despite getting a majority, the Democratic plan will likely fail, however'unless Republicans decide not to filibuster it. In the House, nothing will happen.

Here's an even shorter version: Congress is completely dysfunctional. The only people who are doing anything remotely serious to stop the sequester are Senate Democrats, but they can't even put pressure on House Republicans because a handful of old-timers blocked filibuster reform, giving Senate Republicans veto power.

(Yes, this is yet another reason to ask Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to reopen filibuster reform.)

As for the policy substance of the proposals on the table, none of the plans being talked about would actually completely replace the sequester. The Democratic plan would replace one year of it by reducing long-term spending and closing loopholes for high income taxpayers.

The main Senate Republican plan would replace the sequester with the exact same level of spending cuts over the exact same period of time, except it would require President Obama to decide where to make the cuts instead of the 2011 Budget Control Act. That's really just an effort to gloss over the impact of the sequester, however, and shift the blame to Obama. It faces Democratic opposition as well as GOP opposition.

House Republicans haven't proposed any plan for replacing the sequester during the current Congress. They did pass a plan last year to replace $315 billion of it with cuts to social insurance programs like food stamps, but that left in place nearly $1 trillion in future sequester cuts, largely to domestic priorities. It barely passed the House in 2012, and with the smaller GOP majority in 2013, it probably couldn't pass today.

Tomorrow's episode of Sequester Theater will feature a meeting at the White House with Congressional leaders and President Obama. There's no word yet on whether whatever remains of Bob Woodward's dignity will make an appearance.