As First Read wrote this morning, President Barack Obama's budget is expected to contain an additional $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years -- including a measure to change the way cost-of-living increases are calculated for Social Security recipients. 

The outline, which mirrors an abandoned compromise offer from the White House to House Speaker John Boehner last year, is already causing griping on the left because the entitlement changes would effectively decrease payments to beneficiaries.

But the budget isn’t exactly getting a ringing endorsement from Boehner either. The House Speaker said in a statement Friday that the White House is holding the entitlement reforms "hostage" by asking for further revenues. 

Boehner's full statement follows: 

"The president and I were not able to reach an agreement late last year because his offers never lived up to his rhetoric. Despite talk about so-called balance, the president's last offer was significantly skewed in favor of higher taxes and included only modest entitlement savings. He said he could go no further toward the  middle, and that's why his last offer was rejected.  In the end, the president got his tax hikes on the wealthy with no corresponding spending cuts. At some point we need to solve our spending problem, and what the president has offered would leave us with a budget that never balances.  In reality, he's moved in the wrong direction, routinely taking off the table entitlement reforms he's previously told me he could support.

"When the president visited the Capitol last month, House Republicans stated a desire to find common ground and urged him not to make savings we agree upon conditional on another round of tax increases. If reports are accurate, the president has not heeded that call. If the president believes these modest entitlement savings are needed to help shore up these programs, there's no reason they should be held hostage for more tax hikes. That's no way to lead and move the country forward." 

This story was originally published on Fri Apr 5, 2013 10:46 AM EDT

Susan Walsh / AP

President Barack Obama tours a tunnel project at the Port of Miami, Friday, March 29, 2013, while promoting a plan to create jobs by attracting private investment in highways and other public works.

At the end of a week dominated by issues of immigration and gun control legislation, President Barack Obama on Friday focused on the economy, appearing in Miami to press Congress to pass new tax incentive and federal spending proposals he says will help attract more investment in the nation’s infrastructure.  

He asked the audience at the Port of Miami Terminal: “What are we waiting for?” He continued, “There’s work to be done. There’s workers who are ready to do it. Let’s prove to the world there’s no better place to do business than right here in the United States of America and let’s get started rebuilding America.”

Obama said that the country is still dotted with dated bridges, rail lines, roads and ports that hamper trade and endanger the public.

“We don’t have to accept that for America,” he said. “We can do better. We can build better.”

New in the president’s remarks was a proposal for an expanded bond program and changes in the taxation rules for foreign investment, both designed to encourage private companies to invest in infrastructure projects. Obama also proposed an expansion of current infrastructure spending programs to the tune of $4 billion, and he reiterated his call for a “National Infrastructure Bank,” which he first proposed in 2011.

The administration points to the backdrop of the Miami port as evidence of the potential success of such projects. A tunnel being built to alleviate congestion – funded by a combination of public and private partnerships – has created work for 500 employees and over 6,000 contractors and subcontractors, the White House said.

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A senior advisor said earlier Friday that the combined cost of the proposals is $21 billion, adding that the measures are not expected to increase the deficit.  More details on the cost of the projects will be clear when the president releases his budget on April 10.

Each of the three proposals would require legislative action from Congress, a heavy lift at a time when Republican lawmakers have little appetite for increasing spending.

On Friday, Obama dinged Republicans for disapproving of blanket “government spending” but privately lobbying for infrastructure projects that create jobs – and boost their political popularity – at home.

“I know that members of Congress are happy to weclome projects like this in their districts,” Obama said. “I know because I’ve seen them at the ribbon cuttings.”

Despite the economic focus, the president also touched on the other major legislative pushes that loom after Congress’s Easter recess.

“We’re going to fix our economy,” he said, listing his administration’s priorities at the conclusion of his remarks. “We’re going to fix our immigration system, we are going to make sure that our young people are getting a great education, we’re going to prevent them from being victims of gun violence, and we are going to make sure that everybody in this country has a fair shot and is doing their fair share.” 

The House of Representatives successfully passed Republicans' 2014 budget on Thursday with four votes to spare, relying only upon GOP votes to advance Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan's third budget blueprint.

The House voted 221-207, largely along party lines, to advance the budget for the next government fiscal year. The plan seeks to balance the budget within a decade, primarily by saving $4.6 trillion through cuts to spending, and reforms to Medicare that would transform the plan into a "premium support" (or voucher) system.

Ten Republicans joined with Democrats, all of whom opposed the Ryan budget, to vote against the plan. Due to the defections, Republicans only passed their budget by an extra margin of four votes. Ten Republicans also opposed last year's budget, though there were 241 total GOP members of the House last year, versus 232 sitting Republicans at the time of today's vote.

The budget is the third passed by Republicans since retaking the House in the 2010 elections. But like the two preceding budgets, Ryan's 2014 fiscal blueprint will likely never become law, due to opposition from both the president and Senate Democrats.

The House moved quickly following the budget vote to pass legislation settling spending levels for the rest of this fiscal year, which concludes at the end of September.

The House voted 318-109 with bipartisan support to pass a continuing resolution funding the government through that date, averting a government shutdown that would have occurred at the end of March if spending authority had run out. The Senate passed that legislation on Wednesday, and it now heads to the White House for President Barack Obama's signature, once he returns from a foreign trip to Israel.

The Senate passed legislation on Wednesday to fund the United States through the end of September, making a big step toward averting a threatened government at the end of this month.

Senators voted 73 to 26 to approve the bipartisan budget legislation, which provides just over $1 trillion in budget authority, a level of spending which reflects the spending cuts stipulated by the budget sequester that took effect at the beginning of March.

Consideration of this Senate bill – known as a “continuing resolution,” or “CR” – had stalled in recent weeks due to objections from conservative Republicans who said they wanted to read the bill and offer amendments. Democrats finally struck an agreement with Republicans on those amendments on Wednesday, allowing a final vote on passing the spending package to move forward.

The legislation now heads to the Republican-controlled House, which could take up the bill as soon as Thursday. Though the GOP had already passed its own version of the CR from the House, indications point toward passage of the Senate version. The law would then head to the White House for President Barack Obama’s signature.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had threatened late evenings and weekend work – potentially through the Senate’s upcoming holiday recess to complete both the CR and work on Democrats’ first budget in four years.

After staving off a shutdown, lawmakers will next turn toward reconciling their different budget proposals ahead of a mid-May deadline to extend the nation’s borrowing authority. Immigration reform and proposed new restrictions on firearms also sit atop Congress’s springtime agenda.

Republicans set the stage for this spring's fiscal battles by readying the debut of their new budget blueprint on Tuesday, which they said would achieve $4.6 trillion in savings and balance the U.S. budget within a decade. 

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., argued that his forthcoming budget — the third he's authored as chairman of the House Budget Committee — would be able to achieve a balanced budget by 2023, and boost the gross national product by as much as 1.7 percent in the meanwhile. 

The plan is unlikely to ever become law in its entirety; it assumes a repeal of President Barack Obama's health care reform law, and collects no new revenue from taxes, two elements which are unpalatable to Democrats. 

But budgets are often more political statements about a party's priorities than a hard governing blueprint. With that in mind, Ryan, the 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee, sought to inoculate Republicans from criticism of the budget, and play offense against Democrats' forthcoming budget. 

"Our opponents will shout austerity, but let's put this in perspective," Ryan wrote in an op-ed to be published in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal. "On the current path, spending will increase by 5 percent each year. Under our proposal, it will increase by 3.4 percent. Because the U.S. economy will grow faster than spending, the budget will balance by 2023, and debt held by the public will drop to just over half the size of the economy."

Ryan was set to detail his full plan in a press conference on Tuesday morning, but his op-ed contained key elements of the budget. Ryan's plan would:

• Achieve a total of $4.6 trillion in savings over the next decade
• Enact tax reform that closes loopholes and deductions, while reducing the number of income brackets to two — one at 10 percent, the other at 25 percent
• Change Medicare to a model in which future retirees would receive "premium supports" (Democrats call them vouchers) to subsidize the purchase of insurance from a menu of options, including traditional Medicare
• Repeal the president's health care reform law
• Approve the proposed Keystone XL transnational oil pipeline
• Enact welfare reforms to give states more flexibility in enforcing the program

There are other aspects of Ryan's plan that the Wisconsin congressman will outline tomorrow. Many elements of the new Ryan budget are familiar Republican proposals, weaved together in a comprehensive statement of governing principles. 

The new budget, however, is only the opening salvo in a budget battle that could stretch throughout much of the spring. Congress acted earlier this year to extend the debt limit through mid-May, but only on the condition that the House and the Senate each pass a budget. The Senate budget, authored by Democrats, and their first in years, is also due this week.

And the political fighting over the dueling proposals has already begun. 

"I hate to break the suspense, but their budget won't balance—ever," Ryan wrote. "We House Republicans have done our part … Now we invite the president and Senate Democrats to join in the effort."

The House passed legislation on Wednesday amid a wintry storm in Washington to avert a government shutdown, and keep the government running through the summer. 

The Republican-held chamber voted 267 to 151 to approve a continuing resolution and pull the United States back from the brink of a government shutdown on March 27, when current day-to-day funding is set to expire. Fifty-three Democrats joined with the bulk of Republicans to approve the legislation.

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The maneuver by the House could be a crucial first step toward avoiding a government shutdown this month, though it was not clear whether the GOP proposal would sail through the Senate.

"Today the House has taken the first step towards assuring the American people that the federal government will stay open, which President Obama agrees should be our shared goal," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement. "The Senate should pass the House measure without delay so we can continue focusing on helping Americans get back to work and putting the country on a path to a balanced budget.”

Consideration of the "CR" was sped up to Wednesday afternoon to accommodate a winter storm that had affected Washington, D.C. and its surrounding areas. The vote capped an abbreviated work week for lawmakers in the House.

President Barack Obama said last Friday that the continuing resolution was "the right thing to do to make sure that we don't have a government shutdown." His administration formally released a statement on Tuesday expressing its concerns with the Republican bill, though it stopped short of threatening a veto.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Tuesday that Democrats would produce their own bill to fund the government, with a goal of reaching a final resolution before Congress's Easter recess beginning March 22.

The legislation would extend funding for the government, at existing levels, through the end of the U.S. government's fiscal year — that is, through the end of September. The funding level, though, is subject to the automatic spending cuts, "sequestration," that sprung into effect last Friday. 

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The continuing resolution also contains language meant to deal with some of the most severe aspects of the sequester, which mandates indiscriminate, across-the-board cuts to different parts of the federal budget. The Republican proposal would give the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs more flexibility to reallocate funds in their budgets to avoid some of the harshest consequences of sequestration.

More significantly, this move on Wednesday by the House would seem to end the series of miniature fiscal crises which took the U.S. to the brink of calamity on numerous occasions over the past few years. The onset of sequestration on March 1 and the last-minute resolution on higher taxes for the wealthy on Jan. 1 of this year are only the most recent examples of high-profile fiscal battles on Capitol Hill.

Several other fiscal battles await Congress later this spring, though. Both the House and Senate have vowed to approve formal budgets for the forthcoming fiscal year, and Obama is due to produce his own budget soon. Those budgets are tied into a needed extension of the nation's debt limit, which has been suspended through mid-May. An agreement to extract Republican votes for an increase in the debt ceiling will likely hinge on what, if any, consensus lawmakers can reach on taxes, spending and entitlements.

This story was originally published on Wed Mar 6, 2013 2:04 PM EST

In his first interview since losing the 2012 presidential election, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney criticized President Obama’s early second-term performance and told Fox News Sunday that he’s still very much stung by his defeat.

“I look at what’s happening right now -- I wish I were there,” Romney told Chris Wallace, in a taping conducted last week in California. “It kills me not to be there, not to be in the White House doing what needs to be done.” 

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Romney criticized President Obama’s handling of the budget showdown engulfing Washington, saying, “We don’t have to have gridlock settings one after the other, on issue after issue.”

Romney, who campaigned largely on a promise that he would cut the debt and federal spending, said that the current debate over the nation’s fiscal course, including the so-called “sequester” cuts, represents a missed opportunity.  “I see this as this huge opportunity, and it’s being squandered by politics, by people who are more interested in a political victory than they are in doing what’s right for the country. And it’s very frustrating.”

His wife, Ann Romney, conceded that she was not fully over the election defeat.  "It would have been much better for America, I believe, in my heart if he had been there right now."  When asked what she thought about President Obama’s campaign, Mrs. Romney told Wallace “I think it was a winning campaign. It worked.”  Wallace asked her if she thought the president’s campaign was fair, and she quickly responded that she did not, and that Obama had distorted public perception about her husband, who she called an “exceptional, wonderful person… that really, truly cared about the American people.”

Romney also allowed he made some mistakes during the course of his campaign.  One issue that plagued him at the end of his run was the release of a secretly recorded video showing him speaking at a fundraiser, in which he said that 47% of Americans would vote for the president no matter what, as they were “dependent on the government.”  He told Wallace that the statement was “very harmful” and “not what I believe.”

“There’s no question that hurt and did real damage to my campaign,” Romney admitted.

At the same time, however, Romney said that the “attractiveness” of the president’s health care plan was “a feature that we underestimated, particularly among”  low-income voters.

The couple were asked what it has been like to be out of the public eye, without the massive staff, security and press entourage that was with Romney's campaign at every move.  Ann Romney called the abrupt change an "adjustment, but it’s one that I think we did well."

Romney is making his first public address in two weeks, at C-PAC, a conservative group's annual conference in Washington, D.C.  He told Fox that while he was not expecting the Republican party to necessarily hang on of his every word going forward, he does still want to be involved. “I’m not going to disappear,” he said. “I care about America. I care about the people that can’t find jobs.”

The interview was filmed at the home of Romney's youngest son, Craig, in the San Diego area.  Craig and his wife, Mary, just welcomed newborn twins, Winston and Eleanor, two weeks ago, bringing the total number of grandchildren to twenty, a reality that was on the former candidate’s mind when discussing current events and his future plans.

“I care about my twenty grandkids – the kind of America they’re going to have. And sitting in the sidelines when so much is at stake is just not in my nature,” Romney told Wallace.

In an exclusive interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, House Speaker John Boehner said there is no easy way to stop the budget cuts -- known as the “sequester” -- that began taking effect Friday night, and voiced uncertainty over how Washington can solve the overall fiscal problems that have consumed the nation’s politics for more than two years.

“I don't think anyone quite understands how it gets resolved,” Boehner admitted in his interview with NBC’s David Gregory.

Boehner explained his strategy in the Republicans’ tax-and-spending standoff with President Barack Obama, saying that he didn’t want to “arbitrarily pull out a couple of tax expenditures” just to raise the revenue needed to avert $85 billion in spending cuts which are being made this year.

The president and many of his administration officials have warned of dire consequences to government services and national security if the sequester happens as planned.  But to avoid them and reach a deal, the president wants new tax increases, something Boehner and his fellow Republicans have insisted are off the table.

The spending cuts – which were intended to spur a bipartisan “grand bargain” on deficit reduction, entitlement reform and tax increases -- are part of the 2011 Budget Control Act which Obama signed into law.

Boehner voted for the law and urged his members to do likewise.

But now that the spending cuts are beginning, neither Boehner nor Obama wants them to continue. Yet they have been unable to reach an accord on an alternative measure.

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Larry Downing / Reuters

Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, speaks briefly after a meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House March 1, 2013.

Boehner insisted that Obama should abandon his effort to get more tax increases and instead focus on spending.

“Every American, in these tough economic times, has to find a way to balance their budget. They've got to make choices,” Boehner said. “They expect Washington to live within its means and to make choices as well.”  

He said, “It's time for the president and Senate Democrats to get serious about the long-term spending problem that we have.”

And he noted that if Obama has a credible alternative to the sequester, “why wouldn't Senate Democrats go ahead and pass it?”

Obama has insisted that any plan to replace the sequester must include new tax increases, for example by changing the tax treatment of corporate jets, and by ending tax preferences for oil and gas producers.

But Boehner said Obama had already gotten his tax increase in the deal that he made with Republicans in December. “The president got $650 billion of higher taxes on the American people on January the first,” Boehner said. “How much more does he want?”

Boehner did say that a comprehensive tax reform law would be a way to spark growth. That, in turn, would produce more tax revenue for the federal government.

“American family's wages aren't growing,” the House speaker said. “They're being squeezed. And as a result, we've got to find a way through our tax code to promote more economic growth in our country.  We can do this by closing loopholes, bringing the (tax) rates down for all Americans, making the tax code fairer. It will promote more economic growth.”

Obama said Friday it may take some time before members of Congress agree to bargain with him on how to replace the spending cuts.

He told reporters that he hoped that “after some reflection, as members of Congress start hearing from constituents who are being negatively impacted… that they step back and say, all right, is there a way for us to move forward on a package of entitlement reforms, tax reform, not raising tax rates, identifying programs that don't work, coming up with a plan that's comprehensive and that makes sense.”

He said, “It may take a couple of weeks. It may take a couple of months” before that happens, but in the meantime the spending cuts will dampen economic growth and hurt federal workers who are furloughed and federal contractors who lose work.

“It's going to mean hundreds of thousands of jobs lost,” he said. “That is real. We're not making that up.  That’s not a scare tactic, that’s a fact.”

But Boehner said, “I don't know whether it's going to hurt the economy or not. I don't think anyone quite understands how the sequester is really going to work.”

The speaker said the House would pass a spending plan this week to fund the government through the end of the current fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, and that in his conversation with Obama at the White House Friday, the president had agreed “that we should not have any talk of a government shutdown. So I'm hopeful that the House and Senate will be able to work through this.”

Following Boehner on Meet the Press, Obama economic advisor Gene Sperling said Boehner ought to be willing to consider at least $400 billion more in tax revenue increases over the next ten years as part of a larger agreement on deficit reduction.

Sperling said Obama has already agreed to require higher-income Medicare recipients to pay higher premiums for their coverage than they now pay and has agreed to change the formula for Social Security benefits, which would in effect reduce benefit increases over time.

These were difficult concessions for Obama to make, Sperling said.

In the face of congressional Republicans charging that Obama and his aides have been exaggerating the effect of the spending cuts – with one House Republicans calling their effort “Scarequester” – Sperling said, “Nobody ever suggested that this harmful sequester – which the speaker himself said would be devastating to national security – was going to have all its impact in the first few days.”

But he argued that the spending reductions will “hurt a lot of communities that rely on military spending” and hurt public education.

As House Republicans begin to see the impact he said he hoped they “will choose bipartisan compromise over this absolutist position.”

He noted that on Saturday Obama made phone calls to both Democratic and GOP  senators to form a “caucus of common sense” and support an alternative to the spending cuts. 

The Senate Finance Committee voted 19-5 on Tuesday to report Jack Lew's nomination as Treasury Secretary to the full Senate. 

Lew's nomination moved a step closer to final confirmation before the full Senate with the finance panel's approval, though a floor vote isn't scheduled yet.

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Five Republicans joined with all of the committee's Democrats in supporting Lew. Five Republicans opposed Lew.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, voted yes, but criticized the administration for being reluctant to answer questions about nominees. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, voted no, citing concerns about Lew's ties to Citigroup, which received federal bailout money.

The nation’s capital was enveloped in a familiar kind of gridlock late Monday, as Republicans again demanded that President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats act first to put off $85 billion in automatic cuts slated to take effect on Friday.

“The president says we have to have another tax increase to avoid the sequester,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said of the hefty and indiscriminate spending cuts. “Well, Mr. President, you got your tax increase. It's time to cut spending.”

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As Congress returned to work following a weeklong recess, the Obama administration and lawmakers appeared no closer to resolving the automatic spending cuts before their Friday deadline. While both Democrats and Republicans bemoan the cuts as potentially catastrophic for the economy and the national defense, both sides have been locked in a virtual staring match over the sequester.

The end result is that the cuts seem likely to take effect, if only for some limited period of time, come Friday. Both sides spent Monday posturing rather than working toward a solution.

For their part, the House GOP is content to rest upon the two bills they had passed in the last Congress meant to offset the $85 billion in spending cuts with a series of additional, alternative cuts. Democrats, led by Obama, had rejected that alternative as “unbalanced” because it did not include some measure of new tax revenue.

But, buoyed by stronger approval ratings than congressional Republicans, the president has also been generally unwilling to budge from his stance that a sequester replacement would have to include new tax revenue – likely through closing loopholes and deductions – in addition to other spending cuts.

“Unfortunately, in just four days Congress is poised to allow a series of arbitrary, automatic budget cuts to kick in that will slow our economy, eliminate good jobs, and leave a lot of folks who are already pretty thinly stretched scrambling to figure out what to do,” Obama told a bipartisan group of governors at the White House this morning.

The president leaned on the governors to pressure their respective states' congressional delegations to support a compromise agreement.

Obama has relied increasingly on these public events to make his arguments to the public, pursuing a sort of "outside" strategy meant to rally pressure on lawmakers to strike deals on a range of issues. For instance, Obama will travel to Newport News, Va., on Tuesday to highlight the negative toll the sequester would take on that region's defense industry.

For their part, Republicans have derided the president as spending more time on campaigning against the GOP than working toward a deal.

"Instead of using our military men and women as campaign props, if the president was serious, he'd sit down with Harry Reid and begin to address our problems," Boehner said Monday, referencing the dire warnings of furloughed workers and potential pay cuts for some employees involved with the nation's defenses.

Boehner and the rest of the House GOP appeared no closer to relenting on their demand that any final compromise originate in the Senate. After a roller-coaster past two years in the House, in which conservative lawmakers often threatened to upset delicate agreements Boehner had struck with Obama, the speaker has adopted a strategy of deferring to the Senate on many top legislative matters.

Before the recess, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and the rest of the Democratic leadership unveiled a sequester proposal that would offset the impending cuts with new taxes on corporations and the ultrawealthy, more modest defense cuts and additional cuts in discretionary spending.

"Congress has the power to prevent these self-inflicted wounds," Reid said Monday on the Senate floor. "We have the power to turn off the sequester."

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio responds to President Barack Obama's remarks to the nation's governors earlier today about how to fend off the impending automatic budget cuts, Monday, Feb. 25 on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Amid the pessimism about the prospects for a deal, Boehner half-heartedly told reporters that "hope springs eternal" that an agreement could be reached by Friday.

"The president can sit down with Harry Reid tonight and work with Senate Democrats, who have the majority in the Senate to move a bill. It's time for them to act. I've made this clear for months now, and yet we've seen nothing," he said.

This story was originally published on Mon Feb 25, 2013 4:18 PM EST

What the sequester debate has turned into: all posturing and rhetoric -- but no action… The debate also has turned into about what Bob Woodward wrote over the weekend… GOP message on sequester is all over the place… What a busy week it will be -- Obama to VA, Hagel confirmation vote, IL-2 special, NBC/WSJ poll, and sequester deadline… And Team Obama promises additional access for big donors, contradicting a key message from ’07-’08.

*** All posturing and rhetoric -- but no action How do we know that the looming automatic cuts set to take place on Friday probably will go into effect, at least in the short term? The answer: Everything right now in this debate over the so-called “sequester” has been reduced to rhetoric and posturing -- but not action. While both the Obama White House and congressional Republicans have warned about the dangers associated with these cuts, and have blamed one another for their creation, this weekend saw no new plans of compromise, no new meetings, and no real work as Congress stayed on its recess. Nothing, and we mean nothing, seems to be imminent on even a deal to start TALKING about a deal. So this lack of urgency belies the rhetoric and posturing. If these cuts are so drastic or so ill-considered, why weren’t House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell over at the White House this weekend? Where was President Obama’s compromise offer? But here’s what’s really going on: Both sides are laying the groundwork to see who bleeds the most after March 1 once the spending cuts take effect as a way to see who holds the negotiating upper hand. Yet here’s also the stark reality: No side has a real end game or knows how this will play out. And for now, congressional Republicans are content with status quo, which means the White House has to be willing to change the calculus during the budget talks at the end of the month. Can they?

*** Debating Bob Woodward: Another example of how the sequester fight has been reduced to rhetoric and posturing is that the central argument over the weekend was what a political reporter -- namely the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward -- wrote on Friday night. Woodward, who wrote a book about the 2011 debt-ceiling standoff, penned a WaPo op-ed contending (as he’s done before) that the sequester was the White House’s idea. But he made this (new) additional charge: that the White House is moving the goal posts, because getting revenue was never part of the sequester. Republicans gleefully circulated the Woodward piece, while the White House and liberals fought back. Our take is that Woodward is on solid footing in asserting that the sequester was the White House’s idea to deal with the GOP’s demand for spending cuts to raise the debt ceiling. But Woodward is on much shakier ground when he insists that the White House never wanted revenue to replace the sequester. After all, the whole point of the sequester and the creation of the Super Committee was the INABILITY of getting a deal on taxes. All that said, it’s never a good day when one side is debating a political reporter, no matter the ground on which that reporter is standing.

*** GOP message is all over the place: But it’s also not a good place when one side’s message is all over the place, and that’s the situation where Republicans currently find themselves in this sequester debate. In his Wall Street Journal op-ed last week, Boehner called the spending cuts “dramatic,” arguing that they threatened “U.S. national security, thousands of jobs, and more.” But then when the Obama White House began its campaign noting how deep these cuts would be, Republicans countered that the White House was trying to scare the public. And then over the weekend, Republican governors were contradicting that message. “The uncertainty of sequestration is really harming our states and our national economy,” said Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R). Added Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R): “We've got Raytheon [in Arizona], and we don't know exactly what that's going to do, but it's going to cost a lot of job results.” And Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R): “I think there should be limited government, but I don't like random changes. If you look at my budget, I didn't do across the board cuts. A lot of times politicians talk about 10% across the board, I didn't do that.” So here’s the GOP’s muddled message: First, these cuts could cost jobs and money; second, the Obama administration is trying to scare the American people about these cuts; and third, these cuts could cost jobs and money. What’s happening here: Congressional GOPers are split. Some of the old guard of the GOP (and the leadership) believe sequester is bad and will hurt the economy and hurt the government. Some of the Tea Party types and other conservatives are so frustrated by the inability of Washington to EVER cut spending, they’d take sequester over nothing. This also explains why Boehner has not been able to put together a new sequester replacement bill.

Charles Dharapak / AP

President Barack Obama answers a question from a reporter during his meeting with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Friday, Feb. 22, 2013, in the Oval Office of the White House.

*** What a week that’s coming up: It’s worth noting that the debate over the sequester isn’t the only political story that will be taking place this week. As NBC’s Mike O’Brien writes, the nation’s capital “is bracing for a politically consequential week ahead,” and here are the events we’ll be watching:

Monday, Feb. 25: Obama’s remarks to the National Governors Association beginning at 11:05 am ET.
Tuesday, Feb. 26: Obama travels to Virginia to warn about the looming cuts… Our new national NBC/WSJ poll comes out… The Senate is expected to vote on Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be defense secretary… And the special Democratic primary to fill Jesse Jackson Jr.’s (D-IL) vacated congressional seat takes place.
Wednesday, Feb. 27: The Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the challenge to the Voting Rights Act
Thursday, Feb. 28: Pope Benedict XVI holds his final day as pope
Friday, March 1: Sequester cuts take effect.

*** Team Obama promises additional access for big money to OFA: When he first announced his presidential bid in Springfield, IL six years ago, Obama stressed the need to curb the influence of special interests in Washington. "The cynics, and the lobbyists, and the special interests [have] turned our government into a game only they can play,” he said. “They write the checks and you get stuck with the bills. They get the access, while you get to write a letter. They think they own this government, but we're here to take it back." But the New York Times report over the weekend -- that donors who contribute and raise $500,000 to Obama’s Organizing for Action will get special access to the president -- runs counter to that ’07 promise. If you’re a big business wanting additional contact with the president (lobbyists and PACs are precluded from donating), you’re going to pony up $500,000-plus. The Obama folks can rationalize this all they want (you’ll be disclosing the donors, you’ll also be accepting small-donor money, this is the campaign-finance world we live in after Citizens United), but offering this kind of access to big donors was PRECISELY what Obama was campaigning against in 2007-2008. Every political strategist involved in the 2012 presidential campaign on BOTH sides of the aisle believes the campaign-finance system is a mess. And yet we continue to see a perpetuation of the so-called flawed system. This is how a bad system becomes worse. Wonder what Candidate Obama would say about this?

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GOP’s weak political position on the sequester… Just look at the polls, the lack of compromise, and the message… That said, Democrats have their own sequester problems, too… Rick Scott accepts Medicaid expansion… Look who’s coming to CPAC -- almost everybody… And when it comes to politicians, almost nothing surprises us anymore. See the Pete Domenici story.

Mandel Ngan / AFP - Getty Images

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, addresses the media following a Republican Conference meeting on Feb. 5, 2013 at the Capitol. From left are: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., Conference Vice Chairman Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Kan., House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., Rep. Susan Brooks, R-In., and Conference Chairman Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash.

*** GOP’s weak position on the sequester: Yesterday we asked this question about the political back-and-forth regarding the looming automatic budget cuts that are set to take place on March 1: What if the sky doesn’t fall? But here’s the opposite question: What if it does? And if that’s the case, Republicans stand to pay the steepest political price. It’s not even close right now. For starters, look at the numbers from the first two national polls taken after the State of the Union. The new USA Today/Pew poll: “President Obama starts his second term with a clear upper hand over GOP leaders on issues from guns to immigration that are likely to dominate the year… On the legislation rated most urgent — cutting the budget deficit — even a majority of Republican voters endorse Obama's approach of seeking tax hikes as well as spending cuts.” Also in this poll, the president’s approval rating is at 51%, while the approval for congressional GOPers is at 25%. And here’s Bloomberg’s poll: “… Obama enters the latest budget showdown with Congress with his highest job- approval rating in three years [55%] and public support for his economic message, while his Republican opponents’ popularity stands at a record low [35%].” So these are the numbers when the White House’s P.R. campaign to avert the sequester has only begun and before the expected layoffs and furloughs.

*** Where’s the compromise? Besides the polling numbers, Republicans find themselves in a weak position -- politically -- because they’ve yet to propose ANY kind of compromise that recognizes they don’t control the White House or the U.S. Senate. By contrast, Obama has offered up entitlement cuts (chained CPI for Social Security is apparently still on the table), and he has indicated a willingness to make additional cuts to Medicare (he said so in the State of the Union). But Republicans are refusing to budge on any tax revenues (via closing loopholes, etc.), even though House Speaker John Boehner offered them up during the fiscal-cliff debate. “House Republicans, shrugging off rising pressure from President Obama, are resolutely opposing new tax increases to head off $85 billion in across-the-board spending reductions, all but ensuring the cuts will go into force March 1 and probably remain in place for months, if not longer,” the New York Times says. Interestingly, Karl Rove has proposed a sort of compromise for House Republicans to offer: “pass a continuing resolution next week to fund the government for the balance of the fiscal year at the lower level dictated by the sequester—with language granting the executive branch the flexibility to move funds from less vital activities to more important ones.” In other words, force the Obama administration to choose which programs and entities get funded. Of course, this comes with political risk as many Republicans will fear that the Obama administration will essentially fund what he wants at the expense of programs or projects important to Republicans.

*** A muddled message: In addition to the GOP’s poll numbers and its inability to propose a compromise, a third Republican shortcoming in this sequester debate is the message. Conservative writer Byron York sums the problem of House Speaker John Boehner describing the looming cuts as a policy “that threatens U.S. national security, thousands of jobs and more,” but isn’t earnestly trying to avoid it. “Could the GOP message on the sequester be any more self-defeating?” York asks. “Boehner could argue that the sequester cuts are necessary as a first — and somewhat modest — step toward controlling the deficits that threaten the economy. Instead, he describes them as a threat to national security and jobs that he nevertheless supports. It’s not an argument that is likely to persuade millions of Americans.” As we’ve pointed out in the past, if a party’s opinion writers -- like York and Rove -- are arguing that the party isn’t pursuing a wise course, you’re typically losing the debate.

*** Democrats have their own sequester problems: Of course, none of this is to say that Obama and the Democrats have handled the sequester politics swimmingly. The same polls that show Obama’s approval rating above 50% could easily fall during this latest fiscal standoff. What’s more, the public isn’t engaged in this battle like it has been in previous ones. (Per that USA Today/Pew poll, “barely a quarter have heard a lot about the scheduled cuts, while about as many have heard nothing at all.)  And as the New York Times notes, senior Senate Democratic aides complained that the Obama White House should have demanded a better way to handle the sequester during the fiscal-cliff negotiations. “In late December, as the White House and Senate Republicans closed in on a deal to head off a far larger wave of automatic tax increases, Senate Democrats had urged the president and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to hold out for a better deal on the automatic spending cuts.” But if the sequester sky does fall, Republicans hold the weaker hand. And Democrats -- this DCCC video targeting House Republicans is an example -- are on the offensive.

*** Rick Scott accepts Medicaid expansion: Beyond the upcoming sequester, the other big political story today is Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) saying that his state will accept Medicaid expansion under the federal health-care law. While other GOP governors have refused the expansion (like Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell yesterday), Scott’s decision is significant because -- as Politico writes -- he’s “the biggest symbol of grudging Republican acceptance that Obamacare is the law of the land.” More from that article: “Scott had campaigned against the health legislation even before he began running for office, and Florida led the 26 states that fought it in court.” So Scott, who’s facing a VERY difficult race for re-election next year, isn’t just simply a conservative governor of a swing state; he’s the guy who spent MILLIONS of dollars to stop the health-care law. There’s an interesting pattern developing, and one that isn’t that surprising: Just about any Republican governor in a blue or purple state that Obama carried (or nearly carried) seems to finding a way to compromise on health care, either in setting up exchanges or on Medicaid. The lone exception is McDonnell, but he’s NOT running for re-election and the next election he faces may be with Republican primary voters in 2016.

*** Look who’s coming to CPAC: Yesterday, we also learned -- via NBC’s Sarah B. Boxer -- that Mitt Romney will be addressing CPAC next month, which will be his first public (and political) speech since his concession to Obama on Election Night. And Romney’s participation begs this question: Just who isn’t coming to CPAC? Not only will potential 2016ers (like Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, Paul Ryan) be addressing the conservative confab, but so will folks many Republicans have moved on from (like Romney and Sarah Palin). The only prominent Republican we can see who won’t be addressing CPAC appears to be New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. This is all a recognition of how mainstream CPAC, which used to be considered the anti-establishment wing of the party, has become.

*** Nothing surprises us anymore about politicians: Lastly, we mention this story because it’s proof that NOTHING -- and absolutely nothing -- surprises us about politicians anymore. “Former New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici told the Journal on Tuesday he fathered a son outside of his marriage over 30 years ago, revealing a secret kept for decades. Statements given to the Journal by Domenici and the son’s mother, Michelle Laxalt of Alexandria, Va., identified the son as Adam Paul Laxalt, a Nevada lawyer. Michelle Laxalt formerly was a prominent government relations consultant and television political commentator in Washington, D.C. She is a daughter of former U.S. senator and Nevada Gov. Paul Laxalt,” who served with Domenici in the U.S. Senate. A little history lesson on Laxalt for our younger readers: He was essentially Ronald Reagan’s best friend in the U.S. Senate (almost on the ticket if you believe some reports back in 1980). And Domenici was a real possibility to be Bush 41’s VP in 1988.

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