- President Obama called House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell yesterday to talk about budget issues, but there's no expectations that a sequester replacement deal will be agreed to by March 1.
- The administration continues to believe that a Grand Bargain is possible and that the opportunity to achieve it will present itself at some point this year. Certainly, there are many Republicans who would like to strike such a deal, but as long as the House remains dominated by right wingers whose real goal is to dismantle, not preserve, social insurance programs, a Grand Bargain will be elusive.
- As you can you see at the top of the post, Democrats are out with a new video highlighting media coverage of the economic damage that would be caused by the sequester. Yesterday, Republicans released a deceptively edited video designed to blame President Obama for the sequester.
- Speaking of the blame game, Republicans are losing it badly.
- As Greg Sargent writes, "both sides" are not equally to blame for the refusal to compromise. Yes, both sides created the sequester, but the only reason the sequester was created in the first place was that Republicans refused to negotiate over revenues while simultaneously refusing to raise the debt limit without spending cuts. President Obama, for better or worse, has wanted a Grand Bargain all along.
As we'll see below the fold, there are some signs of GOP division, Politico has more heartburn, and the smallest victims of sequestration will be impoverished four-year old kids.
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