As Republicans decry a White House "road show" and cabinet officials continue to sound the sequester alarm, President Barack Obama said Tuesday that - even if Congress gives him greater flexibility to target coming budget reductions - rapid cuts without new revenues will still inflict "pain" on the national economy.

"The problem is, when you're cutting 85 billion dollars in seven months, which represents over a 10 percent cut in the defense budget … there's no smart way to do that," he said in a speech in the ship-building community of Newport News, Va. 

Obama's address at a shipbuilding plant came hours after House Speaker John Boehner used blunt language to urge Senate action on a budget fix, saying the upper chamber's members should "get off their ass" to avert the sequester.

In Virginia, Obama warned that the current across-the-board cuts will be particularly damaging for jobs along the state's defense-industry-rich coastline. 

"These cuts are wrong, they're not smart, they're not fair," he said. "They're a self-inflicted wound that doesn't have to happen." 

The backdrop of Newport News Shipbuilding offered a visual aide for the president, who lamented how fiscal scuffles on the Hill have caused uncertainty in the private sector. 

The overhaul of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which is currently docked nearby , has been put on hold due to economic uncertainty surrounding not only the cuts but also the funding of the government which is due to run out at the end of March.

Obama blamed the impasse on Republican unwillingness to compromise on tax reform measures that would raise additional revenue. 

"Too many Republicans in Congress right now refuse to compromise even an inch when it comes to closing tax loopholes and special interest tax breaks," he said. "And that's what holding things up right now."

The president was joined on the trip by the area's Rep. Scott Rigell, a Republican.  

Rigell told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to the event that -- although many in his party say the GOP should accept no more revenue-raising proposals from Democrats --  he has advised his Republican colleagues against resisting measures like closing tax loopholes. 

"I don't think that's a wise position and I don't hold that value," he said. 

The trip to Virginia -- a swing state -- comes amid complaints from the GOP that Obama is "campaigning" on the road rather than addressing the solution to the coming budget slashes.

"He has traveled over 5000 miles the last two weeks, and we challenge him travel a mile and half and come to Capitol Hill," said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers of Washington on Tuesday. "Sit down with Harry Reid and urge the Senate Democrats to take action."

In his comments Tuesday morning, Boehner placed blame squarely on Senate Democrats for failing to propose a fix.   "We have moved a bill in the House twice," Boehner said at a press conference. "We should not have to move a third bill before the Senate gets off their ass and begins to do something." 

Republicans also slammed the White House this week for "scaring" Americans by overstating the consequences of the cuts, which would total $1.2 trillion over 10 years.

That push from administration officials continued Tuesday, with Attorney General Eric Holder warning bluntly that the sequester will make the country "less safe." 

"We’ll do the best that we can to minimize the harm that actually occurs as result of the sequestration, but the reality is there is going to be harm. There is going to be pain," he told a meeting of state attorneys general in Washington D.C. "The American people are going to be less safe." 

Charles Dharapak / AP

President Barack Obama speaks about automatic defense budget cuts during a visit to Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries, Tuesday, Feb. 26, in Newport News, Va.

Newly-minted Secretary of State John Kerry, traveling on his first foreign trip in his new post, told embassy staff in Berlin that he sympathizes with their confusion about Washington's machinations. 

"We face tough budget choices, and I know you sometimes scratch your heads - because I do it at home - and say what the hell are those guys doing or not doing as the case may be, and it's frustrating," he said. "And I get it."

And Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano summed up her own feelings about the budgetary staring contest Tuesday with a literal slap to the forehead. 

"You know, I've been in government and public service a long time-- 20 years actually," she said, after burying her head in her hands. "I have never seen anything like this." 

NBC's Shawna Thomas and Frank Thorp contributed to this report. 

This story was originally published on Tue Feb 26, 2013 10:24 AM EST

Amid a growing sense that the drastic and automatic spending cuts known as the “sequester” are likely to take effect at the beginning of March, House Republicans have spent the last few weeks pinning the blame squarely on President Barack Obama if these cuts take place.

“We’re weeks away from the president’s sequester,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Wednesday morning on Capitol Hill. “And the president laid out no plan to eliminate the sequester and the harmful cuts that will come of it.”

Yet it’s not as though Obama has embraced the cuts, which economists warn could not only cost thousands of American jobs, but also threaten to weaken the national defense because a large portion of them fall disproportionately upon the Pentagon’s budget. Rather, he mimicked Republicans, and pointed fingers.

“In 2011, Congress passed a law saying that if both parties couldn’t agree on a plan to reach our deficit goal, about a trillion dollars’ worth of budget cuts would automatically go into effect this year,” the president said in his State of the Union address.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, accompanied by the fellow House GOP leadership, speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill on Feb. 5, 2013, to urge President Barack Obama to offer ideas to replace the looming, automatic budget cuts known as the sequester.

The blame game reflects the unpopularity of those cuts; a Quinnipiac University poll released earlier this month found that 43 percent of Americans oppose letting the sequester take effect, versus 22 percent who favor the automatic cuts. Almost a third of Americans expressed no opinion, though that number would almost certainly drop if the cuts are swiftly implemented.

But the mere fact that sequestration continues to hover over Washington’s budget battles is a direct result of the dysfunction that has come to characterize negotiations between Obama and congressional Republicans over the past two years. Despite both sides’ work to absolve themselves of responsibility for these cuts, there is more than enough blame to spread around.

The sequester was the byproduct of the last-minute deal forged in August of 2011 to raise the nation’s debt limit. As the deadline for default neared, Obama and Boehner struggled to reach an agreement that would give House Republicans the spending cuts they wanted, and allow Obama to prevent a default on the national debt.

That fight itself was somewhat unusual. Republicans, in their zest to extract spending cuts from the president, took the unusual step of demanding cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit, a congressional prerogative that had been largely routine in modern history.

According to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward’s book “The Price of Politics,” it was the White House that first suggested some kind of triggered spending cuts as part of a compromise to extract more borrowing authority. This is the primary evidence by which Republicans make their charge.

But GOP leaders also no longer acknowledge their own role in pushing the measure through Congress. Boehner told CBS News at the time of the deal that he was happy with the agreement, and “got 98 percent of what I wanted.”

“No one said it's his responsibility alone. We've just pointed out accurately that the only reason it exists is his insistence on it,” Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said Wednesday. “Given that fact, he, more than anyone, has responsibility to do something about it. And they've done nothing.”

Blame game
The whole point of the sequester, though, was its design – fashioned to be so reckless and deep in its cuts that it would be politically distasteful to lawmakers in both parties, forcing the administration and congressional Republicans to reach an agreement.

In fact, the 2011 agreement also created the so-called “super committee,” the bipartisan, bicameral panel that was intended to generate a comprehensive proposal to replace the sequester with a series of spending cuts, new tax revenue and entitlement reforms.

Their work failed because Republicans and Democrats couldn’t reach an agreement – a prime example of the strident divisions that characterized the last Congress.

Sequestration, of course, was the other prong of the so-called “fiscal cliff,” the economically catastrophic combination of those spending cuts and the automatic spending hikes that were set to take place at the beginning of this year. Lawmakers addressed part of the tax component when they passed legislation allowing taxes to rise on household income over $450,000.

But they punted on the sequester for another two months, setting up the end-of-February deadline before these spending cuts take place. And as the onset of the sequester seems more and more like a fait accompli, Republicans and Democrats are now scrambling to assign blame.

GOP lawmakers’ central argument now is that they have passed an alternative to the sequester, though it leans solely on spending cuts and was regarded as dead in the Democratic-controlled Senate before the House even passed the proposal.

That’s at least better, Republicans argue, than the administration. The president has not formally debuted a detailed legislative alternative to the sequester, relying instead on outlining broad parameters and leaving the work to lawmakers.

“If Congress can’t act immediately on a bigger package … then I believe that they should at least pass a smaller package of spending cuts and tax reforms that would delay the economically damaging effects of the sequester for a few more months until Congress finds a way to replace these cuts with a smarter solution,” Obama said on Feb. 5.

He outlined more specific parameters – tax reform, entitlement savings and spending cuts – in Wednesday’s State of the Union that, Obama argued, would make up a more “balanced” replacement for the sequester.

That wasn’t enough for Boehner.

“Republicans have twice passed bills to replace the sequester,” the top Republican said on Wednesday. “It’s incumbent upon the president and Senate Democrats to show us their plan to stop the sequester from going into effect.”

Until then, more buck-passing.

Related:

Obama's State of the Union lands with a thud in Congress

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor sought to lead Republicans past their dollars-and-cents fights of the last two years, arguing Tuesday for a more expansive agenda that resonates with a broader scope of Americans.

As the GOP works to redefine itself in the wake of an electoral drubbing last fall, Cantor outlined a series of policies he said Republicans would pursue over the next two years. The agenda includes staples of Republican politics — tax and entitlement reforms, for instance — but also education, immigration and research and development, particularly in the sciences.

Recommended: Obama calls for at least short-term fix with cuts, revenue to avoid sequester

"In Washington, over the past few weeks and months, our attention has been on cliffs, debt ceilings and budgets, on deadlines and negotiations," Cantor said at a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank in Washington. "But today, I'd like to focus our attention on what lies beyond these fiscal debates. Over the next two years, the House majority will pursue an agenda based on a shared vision of creating the conditions for health, happiness and prosperity for more Americans and their families."

Mandel Ngan / AFP - Getty Images

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., speaks to the media following a Republican Conference meeting on Feb. 5, 2013 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

The speech fits squarely within the rubric of reinvention sought by the GOP at the advent of President Barack Obama's second term. The Virginia congressman offered generally familiar proposals, couched in the rhetoric of middle class advancement. This "softer" approach to policy-making squares with an emerging Republican consensus that the party does not necessarily need to change its policies so much as frame them in a way that is more relevant to middle class, minority, and women voters.

To that extent, Cantor was flanked at moments during his speech by students from schools in inner-city Washington, a master's student from China looking to stay in America, a nurse from Baltimore looking for a more flexible work schedule, and a former intern of Cantor's who benefited from improved medical technology.

Cantor sought with his speech to put a newer, more accessible face on the Republican Party; whether he'll succeed is a question that might not be answered for two or four more years.

First Read: Cantor's shift on immigration

One policy shift Cantor did announce was in regard to immigration. The No. 2 House Republican embraced the thrust of the so-called DREAM Act, a piece of immigration legislation looking to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children a pathway to citizenship.

"It is time to provide an opportunity for legal residence and citizenship for those who were brought to this country as children and who know no other home," he said.

Other points of emphasis were familiar to any observers of the contemporary GOP.

On education, Cantor called for increased access to vouchers, more efficient spending per student, cost transparency in college tuition and fuller disclosure to students about the career prospects associated with different degrees.

On immigration, Cantor endorsed easier access to green cards to immigrants with high-level degrees, a reformed guest worker program and stronger employee verification tools.

And in an appeal to middle class workers, Cantor endorsed giving all employees greater flex-time at work and simpler simpler ways to file taxes.

On top of this, Cantor appealed to Republican staples: comprehensive tax reform and reforms to Medicare (including streamlined provider networks, and increased leeway for states to administer their own programs).

The recurring theme, though, for Cantor involved an appeal directed intently toward middle class voters.

"Government policy should aim to strike a balance between what is needed to advance the next generation, what we can afford, what is a federal responsibility and what is necessary to ensure our children are safe, healthy and able to reach their dreams," Cantor said.

President Barack Obama said if congressional negotiators cannot draft a full budget by March 1, they should at least come up with a short-term combination of spending cuts and revenue increases in order to stave off deep federal spending cuts scheduled for that date.

"If Congress can't act immediately on a bigger package, if they can't get a bigger package done by the time the sequester is scheduled to go into effect," Obama said, "then I believe that they should at least pass a smaller package of spending cuts and tax reforms that would delay the economically damaging effects of the sequester for a few more months until Congress finds a way to replace these cuts with a smarter solution."

Charles Dharapak / AP

President Barack Obama turns towards cameramen and reacts to a sound as he speaks in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2013.

The sequester, reached as part of 2011 budget negotiations, was never actually supposed to take effect. Rather, its deep cuts, including almost $500 billion in defense spending over nine years, were put in place as a trigger to get Congress to agree to more comprehensive budget and tax reform.

House Speaker John Boehner released a written statement before Obama’s remarks, blaming the president for the sequester and saying he would not support any additional revenue increases.

“President Obama first proposed the sequester and insisted it become law,” Boehner said, adding, “We believe there is a better way to reduce the deficit, but Americans do not support sacrificing real spending cuts for more tax hikes."

In recent weeks, members of Congress appeared to be playing rhetorical chicken over the cuts, with some suggesting they were resigned to the across-the-board cuts.

“I think it’s more likely to happen,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was quoted as saying by the Washington Post last week.

But the White House has stood firm on the self-imposed cuts, with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney underscoring Friday that the sequester was always intended to be replaced.

“The negative consequences of implementation would be bad across the board," Carney said. "That's the point. So Congress needs to do its job."

And the president hinted that revenues would remain central to all budget negotiations, telling CBS in a Sunday interview that “there is no doubt we need additional revenue coupled with smart spending reductions in order to bring down our deficit."

As they prepare to settle in for another four years of President Barack Obama, Republicans are already busily working on their roadmap to retake the levers of power in Washington. Whether they will need a modest re-calibration or a wholesale reinvention remains an open question.

Obama's November victory arguably marked a new low point for the GOP. The Republican Party now wrestles with a president unburdened with the stresses of an impending re-election campaign and enjoying relatively high popularity.

What’s more, Obama has already worked to set in motion an aggressive – and mostly progressive – agenda that makes most conservatives cringe.

For Republicans, the work to re-position themselves to win back the White House in 2016, and, before that, shore up majorities in the House and Senate, has already begun. And a key step toward reaching those goals, said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, involves making the party more inviting to voters who do not traditionally compose the party’s base.

Jason Reed / Reuters

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus gavels the 2012 Republican National Convention into session during the opening session of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida August 27, 2012.

“We didn’t lose Wisconsin because we weren’t Facebooking pheasant hunters,” he said. “We need more voters.”

Democrats’ victories prompted a round of hand-wringing and recrimination in the immediate aftermath of the election. Having been drubbed among women and Latino voters, some Republicans argued for finally embracing some sort of immigration reform, and directed their ire toward those high-profile Republican candidates who made controversial comments about abortion and rape that fall. Still others pointed to the Obama campaign’s decisive advantage over Romney in digital outreach and voter targeting, while others laid the blame for the party’s defeat squarely with Romney himself.

“This certainly isn't the first time a party loses a presidential election and has to figure out how it does better,” said Henry Barbour, a Republican National Committee member from Mississippi who’s helping to lead the “Growth and Opportunity Project,” the RNC-commissioned review of the party’s failings in the 2012 elections. “Things are never as good as you think, or as bad as you think.”

Some of the project’s recommendations, which are on course for release as soon as March, are glaringly obvious. Republicans are virtually unanimous in agreeing on improved digital tools to court voters, as well as improved outreach to key voting communities – like Hispanics or women voters.

Priebus said he’s taking a cue from former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s “50 State Strategy” he enacted as chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

“We have to compete everywhere again. You go back and look at the electoral map in 1988, and you look at the states that were red. It’s stunning,” he said. “I think the charge for us is to run up the hill and make the case everywhere that the Republican Party is the home for more Americans.”

'Battle over strategy'
But as party leaders fan out to hear from elected officials and grassroots activists alike about the trajectory of the party, the GOP on Capitol Hill has been anything but a tribute to party unity.

If House Speaker John Boehner’s remarks about accepting new revenue in the aftermath of Obama’s victory were emblematic of Republicans’ soul-searching after the election, then the weeks since then have painted a vivid portrait of just how divided the GOP is about its path forward.

“If we’re split on anything, it’s on strategy, not the final goals,” said Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., a darling of conservatives. “I think what you’re seeing now is a battle over strategy, not over principle.”

The battle over the so-called fiscal cliff laid bare many of the fissures that plagued Republicans in Congress for the past two years, bringing the government to the brink of shutdown several times and almost tipping the government into a default on its debt. The party’s ability to speak with one voice has been hampered by familiar internal, ideological divisions.

When Boehner offered to raise taxes on millionaires – a concession, but one that Obama dismissed outright – conservatives undercut their leader’s bargaining position by refusing to pass it out of the House.

Even when Democrats won an income tax hike, it was over the objections of most House Republicans; Boehner won another term as speaker over the defections of some high-profile conservatives, including Mulvaney, who did not vote.

“I do believe that, as a party, we need to focus on the things that unite us,” Barbour said. “Folks in the party aren't going to agree on everything, and that's OK. The Republican Party is a diverse, broad party.”

And as party leaders attempt to put a fresh face on the Grand Old Party, the first few months of Obama’s second term seem destined to test the divisions among Republicans.

The president has signaled his intention to seek comprehensive immigration reform and new, stricter controls on firearms – two initiatives that could split conservatives who want to hold the ideological line from Republicans who wish to shed the party’s image of intractability, and cut some sort of a deal with Obama.

Those battles will play out alongside what’s expected to be a bruising fight in just a few weeks over raising the debt ceiling, continuing government spending and dealing with the automatic spending cuts in the fiscal cliff, which were delayed for two months past the beginning of this year. The deadlines for all three of those issues fall within a few weeks of each other in late February and early March.

'We have a mish-mash'
And already, some Republicans are openly discussing the possibility of a shutdown or default, things which Boehner and other GOP leaders had openly disavowed during similar fights in 2011. Mulvaney said “the world is not going to end” if the U.S. defaults on its debt.

“No one wants to default; not even the most right-wing nutjob wants to default,” he said. “But do we want to throw money at paying the light bill at the Department of Education?”

But as Republicans wrestle with these divisions, there’s always the hope of the one development that seems to solve most problems in politics: winning.

After Romney’s loss and Boehner’s struggles with his rank-and-file, Republicans lack for any natural leader behind whom the party could rally. The country is still years away from the next presidential primary, a contest which might test many of these same fault lines within the GOP.

“It's absolutely a challenge that we face. The Democrats have Barack Obama, and we have a mish-mash,” Mulvaney said. “We have the speaker of the House, the minority leader of the Senate, various outside groups and very vocal folks over in the Senate, along with a cast of presidential cast-offs in the last four years. We haven't really coalesced yet.”

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Vice President Joe Biden told a group of House Democrats Monday that the White House could use the Obama for America campaign infrastructure built during the presidential campaigns to push for the gun control policies that the White House intends to introduce on Wednesday.

According to Rep Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., who attended the meeting, Biden told the group "that they were going to use their campaign mold" to pursue gun control policies.

"What he needs to do is like he ran the campaign, same as President Clinton did, to get out to the American people," McCarthy said, "And that's what we need."

McCarthy, who is on the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, says their group of House Democrats will meet with Chris Cox of the NRA next week to discuss their strategy for gun control legislation.

Their recommendations, which will be separate from the president's, will likely be released the first week of February, McCarthy said.

But the political realities of passing an outright assault weapons ban, which McCarthy supports, are becoming clear to members in the House.

Even McCarthy herself admitted "We're not going to get an outright ban."

"Senator Reid has said he doesn't know whether he has the votes (for an assault weapons ban)," she said. "There's heavy lifting, so are we going to waste time on heavy lifting? Or are we going to try to work on doing something that could actually get passed?"

McCarthy added that there is a growing sense that a ban on high-capacity clips is something that could garner enough votes in both the House and Senate.  She also said she's hoping the Senate passes a package of gun control measures first, in an effort to put pressure on the Republican-controlled House.

"I think (Senator Reid) could pass a package without the (assault weapons) ban, and I think he probably thinks that too," McCarthy said, "But let's play it out.  We'll see what the President offers tomorrow and we'll go from there."

Two and a half months after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the Northeast coast, the political fight over federal spending to assist the recovery efforts continues in Congress.

In the end, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut will almost certainly get more than $60 billion in federal aid to help them recover and rebuild.

But efforts by some House members even as late as Monday night to add unrelated funds to the Sandy emergency aid bill provided an object lesson in why such emergency bills are perfect vehicles for adding more spending.

The House on Tuesday will be voting on both a larger Sandy bill, costing $33.7 billion, offered by Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R- N.J., a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, and a smaller one, costing $17 billion, offered by Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky.

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If the House were to pass both those bills and if one adds the $9.7 billion that the House OK’d on Jan. 4 in additional borrowing authority for the National Flood Insurance Program, the total aid, at least for now, would be $60.4 billion.

At Monday night’s hearing of the House Rules Committee that considered 92 amendments to the bill, Rogers explained that his version was “Sandy only. We tried to rifle-shot money to this immediate catastrophe…. We kept everything out of my bill except Sandy.”

Rogers reminded committee members that tens of billions of federal dollars have already been spent on helping people hurt by Sandy. “So far FEMA has been able to award states a total of $3.1 billion for the immediate needs that have been taking place while we were scouring the numbers (in the big Sandy relief bill),” he reported. “For example, New York has received $2.1 billion and New Jersey almost $900 million, Connecticut $38 million.”

Among the differences between Frelinghuysen’s bigger bill and Rogers’s smaller one: Frelinghuysen would provide more funding for the operations of federal agencies in the Sandy-affected states – even if the agency is not directly engaged in helping people or businesses hit by the storm. For instance, Frelinghuysen’s bill would provide $50 million to the National Park Service’s Historic Preservation Fund for “expenses related to the consequences of Hurricane Sandy” and another $10 million for Sandy-related building and construction expenses for the federal prison system. Rogers’s bill does not include this funding.

Some House Republicans are still balking at the sheer size of the bills and at the near certainty that some money won’t be going directly to victims or towns hit by the storm.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, walks to a strategy session with GOP members, on Capitol Hill, Friday, Jan. 4, 2013, at the start of the first full day of business for the new 113th Congress.

Rules Committee member Rep. Rob Woodall, R- Ga., said Monday night, “If we have an urgent need, let’s agree on that number we can agree on and let’s get it out the door with haste, but if we have a giant need, then let’s give it the slow and thoughtful scrutiny that we owe folks back home.”

He noted that a $60 billion bill for Sandy – to be given just a few days of debate -- would be larger than the normal appropriations bills for the State Department or the Homeland Security Department on which Congress deliberates for months.

Disaster relief bills are massive, have emotional appeal, and aren’t subject to as much scrutiny as spending bills that go through the normal Appropriations Committee process.

This bill has particular momentum since House Speaker John Boehner was so harshly criticized by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and House members from the Northeast for not allowing a vote on a Sandy relief bill on New Years’ Eve.

And the bigger the emergency, the better the opportunity to add more money. Last June’s wildfires in Colorado and the 2011 tsunami in Japan both occurred months before Sandy and hundreds or even thousands of miles away from Sandy, but emergency bills are an opportunity to get aboard a moving train and get money for disasters in one’s own district.

For example:
• Rep. Cory Gardner, R- Colo. and other Colorado members proposed $125 million for watershed protection and flood mitigation around the nation, including about $20 million for areas in Colorado burned by last summer’s wildfires. This watershed protection money was in the Sandy bill that the Senate passed last month.
• Rep. Rick Larsen, D- Wash. proposed an amendment to allow the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration greater leeway over the $290 million in Sandy marine debris cleanup funds so that Pacific Coast states could get some of that money to cope with their own marine debris from the March 2011 Japanese tsunami.
“Just last month, an entire Japanese dock washed up on the Washington state coast,” Larsen said in a statement. “Our state and local governments do not have the resources to deal with this problem, which can cost as much as $4,300 per ton of debris that comes ashore.”

Ultimately the Rules Committee did not allow those two amendments to proceed to the House floor for Tuesday’s debate. It did allow a few amendments to try to offset the cost of the Sandy aid.

For example the House will consider a proposal by Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R- S.C. to offset $17 billion in Sandy funding by a 1.63 percent across-the-board cut in non-Sandy discretionary funding.

“I’ve lived through a hurricane myself; I’ve had my office destroyed by a flood; I think this (emergency aid) is a proper function of the government….I just want to try to find a way to pay for it,” Mulvaney told the Rules Committee. “This is important; there is no question. Is it important enough to borrow money from China to do it, especially when we’re already borrowing money from China to do so many other things?”

As 113^th Congress begins, Boehner finds himself boxed in like never before… But he will still likely win re-election as speaker… The 113^th Congress, by the numbers… Assessing the aftermath of the fiscal-cliff deal: Obama emerges as a winner… But is it just a short-term win?... The re-emergence of McConnell… And the re-emergence of Biden.

Molly Riley / AFP - Getty Images

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, walks out after a second meeting with House Republicans at the Capitol on Jan. 1, 2013.

*** Boehner boxed in: Exactly two years ago, John Boehner was the toast of Washington. Fueled by the Tea Party gains in the 2010 midterms and facing a humbled president and Democratic Party, Boehner was elected House speaker. Flash forward to today: Boehner likely will once again win election as speaker. But after passage of the fiscal-cliff deal and the House’s inability to pass a Hurricane Sandy relief package, Boehner finds himself boxed in like never before. Roll Call: “Over the past few weeks, the Ohio lawmaker has been raked over the coals by members of all stripes within his own party — first by those seeking less spending in exchange for tax rate hikes, then by those seeking more spending for disaster aid. The public thrashing came to a head Wednesday when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie … blatantly accused Boehner of political cowardice for pulling a supplemental aid package for those affected by Superstorm Sandy.” (Boehner has since said that getting Sandy relief will be the first legislative priority of the new 113^th Congress.) The one true achievement by Boehner and the House Republicans is that they have turned every spending bill into a debate, which wasn’t the case before, and that is an achievement for the party of small government. But here’s the central question to ask: Is the Republican Party in a better position today than it was two years ago? It’s hard to argue “yes” to that question.

*** But he will still likely win re-election as speaker: As noted above, with today’s start of the 113^th Congress, the House of Representatives will vote to elect a speaker of the House. While it is likely that John Boehner will be re-elected as speaker, per NBC’s Frank Thorp, we could see the first second ballot for speaker since 1923 if 16 conservatives decide to vote against Boehner. Thorp adds that the 113th Congress will convene for the first time at noon ET, after which the House will vote to elect the speaker. Members will be called by name alphabetically and asked for their vote.  This vote is different than typical votes, which are done electronically during a set period of time. The speaker needs a majority of all votes cast to be elected.  If all members were to vote, Boehner would need 217 votes, unless there are members who are absent for the vote, or members who vote "present" (for no one). By the way, it seems that the House No. 2 Republican, Eric Cantor, was caught selling out the king in the Sandy mess. Here was Christie at his press conference: “I was called at 11:20 last night by Leader Cantor and told that authority for the vote had been pulled by the speaker.” Just askin’, but when Cantor decided to share with Christie his version of what happened to Sandy relief, did Cantor know Christie would go public?  Remember all those stories about Cantor and Boehner becoming closer? Um, yeah… how do you spell a-w-k-w-a-r-d?

*** The 113th Congress, by the numbers: The 113th Congress’ partisan breakdown will be as follows: In the House, per NBC’s Frank Thorp: 233 Republicans, 200 Democrats, two vacancies (Tim Scott and Jesse Jackson Jr.) That means once those two seats are filled, it will likely be 234-201.) That’s a slightly narrower breakdown than the 112th, which ended with 240-191, four vacancies. In the Senate, Democrats will continue to control the Senate – but with a slightly larger 55-45 majority (including two independents who will caucus with the Democrats). As NBC’s Carrie Dann reported last month: A record-breaking 20 women will serve in the Senate, while 78 will be seated in the United States House. There will be 16 Iraq and Afghanistan vets of the new members. There will also be four new members who are LGBT, almost doubling the number of openly gay lawmakers. And remember, for the first time in history, white men will NOT make up the majority of the House Democratic caucus. Also, today marks the return of Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) after his stroke. Per the Chicago Daily Herald, Kirk “plans to climb the 45 steps of the U.S. Capitol without the aid of a handrail.”

*** Assessing the aftermath of the fiscal-cliff deal: A win for Obama: Yes, liberals and Senate Democrats think President Obama gave up too much for a deal. And, yes, there's another fiscal fight coming up (more on that below). But he got a deal, proving that the GOP "fever" did break, at least for a while. He also delivered on a campaign promise to raise the taxes on the wealthy (although had to compromise from $250,000 to $450,000), and he got Republicans (!!!) to give him cover in raising taxes -- something Bill Clinton was never able to do. And he protects a fragile, yet growing, economy. It’s hard to see how that isn't a win for the president.

*** But is it just a short-term win? The question is how long that win lasts. After all, we’ll have another fiscal showdown in two months over the debt ceiling, government operations, and the sequester. So what happened over New Year's was a partial surgery -- the patient and the doctors still need to come back to finish the job. Yes, Republicans now have more leverage heading into this debt-ceiling fight. But two things happened over New Year's that are significant: 1) Republicans proved they could support an increase in tax rates and 2) House Republicans also proved that you don't need a "majority of the majority" to bring legislation to the floor. And there is now a path forward for future deals, as the New York Times notes, with the White House working with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. But can that last? And who speaks for Republicans? Those are questions over which the Obama White House will have to wrestle.

*** The re-emergence of McConnell: Speaking of the Senate minority leader, so much for the early thought that the Senate -- and Senate Republicans -- wouldn't be a key factor in the negotiations. Given how much the GOP was going to be blamed for going off the cliff, McConnell protected his party, and it allows it to fight on better terrain two months from now. McConnell, who faces re-election in Kentucky next year, pens a Yahoo op-ed saying that he will now be pursuing spending cuts. “Was [the fiscal-cliff deal] a great deal? No. As I said, taxes shouldn’t be going up at all. Just as importantly, the transcendent issue of our time, the spiraling debt, remains completely unaddressed. Yet now that the president has gotten his long-sought tax hike on the ‘rich,’ we can finally turn squarely toward the real problem, which is spending.” Can McConnell politically handle making the right mad by becoming the dealmaker in a year he has to prep for his own re-election in very red Kentucky? And if not McConnell, who? And who speaks for Republicans? If Boehner isn’t going to do anymore one-on-one talks with the White House (and why should he at this point, the trust between the two offices is just awful at this point), who is Boehner’s wing man? Cantor? (See Sandy story.) McCarthy? (He’s tight with Cantor.) Perhaps it’s Paul Ryan? (But does he have his own ambitions?) The White House would certainly like to know; they LOVE the Biden-McConnell gambit, but could other partnerships be created? Say, Geithner-Ryan on the debt ceiling? Or how about Obama-Rubio on immigration?

*** The re-emergence of Biden: Has there been a more underappreciated vice president? Yes, he's the butt of jokes and "The Onion" parodies. But the guy delivered in reaching across the aisle. The whole point in Obama hiring Biden was to have him as his congressional go-to guy; For some reason, many in the West Wing are hesitant to let Biden be Biden and play this role until the very last minute. While Biden allowed himself to be rolled by staffers every now and then in the West Wing, in a second term (with his own eye on the Oval), we’re guessing Biden’s going to less inclined to take a backseat come March.

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Updated 6:30 p.m. ET -- President Barack Obama tasked the United States Senate with trying to resolve the “fiscal cliff” in the waning hours before the New Year following a meeting between congressional leaders and the president.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will lead the last-minute effort to avert the automatic tax hikes and spending cuts set to take effect on Jan. 1 unless Congress acts. 

And Obama said he is “optimistic” they can reach an accord before midnight on New Year’s Eve, the point at which the government would hit the fiscal cliff.

Absent that, the president said he had asked Reid to instead advance a bare-boned proposal that would extend the 2001 Bush tax cuts for income under $250,000.

Related -- Cliff Notes: Five things to watch at today's White House meeting

“I still want to get this done,” Obama said after his discussions with congressional leaders. He said “the hour for immediate action is here. It is now." 

The president will appear exclusively on Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," where he's expected to further outline steps toward reaching a final deal.

The White House talks -- at which Obama presented no new offer to Republicans in Congress -- yielded “no concrete proposal,” Reid told reporters at the Capitol following the meeting.

But in the waning hours before the end-of-year deadline, senators are now scrambling to produce a bipartisan package, at the request of Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, that can muster enough support in the House.

Reid, McConnell, Boehner, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., spent the meeting “discussing potential options and components for a plan that could pass both chambers of Congress,” according to a Boehner aide. 

But the most significant development appeared to be the emerging consensus that any final agreement would have to emerge from the Senate. That deal would necessarily require a “bipartisan approach,” according to the office of McConnell, the Republican leader in the upper chamber.

Among the major sticking points, senior Democratic aides told NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell, involve the income threshold at which tax rates would be allowed to rise and the level at which estates are taxed.

Boehner’s failed effort last week to push through a fallback plan with only Republican votes laid bare the internal GOP divisions after conservatives balked at supporting a plan from the speaker to allow tax rates to rise on income over $1 million.

The unsuccessful effort suggested that Boehner would need to lean upon Pelosi for Democratic votes if a deal -- which has eluded Obama and Congress for the better part of the last two years -- is to pass. 

A Senate-led agreement, though, faces no surefire guarantee of passage in the House. 

“The speaker told the president that if the Senate amends the House-passed legislation and sends back a plan, the House will consider it -- either by accepting or amending,” Boehner’s aide emailed reporters.

The protracted stalemate between Obama-led Democrats and congressional Republicans had prompted Friday's last-ditch meeting at the White House. It lasted just over an hour, and included Vice President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

Sources familiar with the meeting said that Obama made no new offer to Republicans, urging them to hold an up-or-down vote on a Democratic proposal to preserve existing tax rates for income under $250,000 and extend unemployment benefits (among other unresolved issues). 

It’s that very proposal which Obama said he would ask Reid to advance should he and McConnell fail to strike a deal. 

“I believe such a proposal could pass both houses with bipartisan majorities, as long as those leaders actually allow it to come to a vote,” he said.

Republicans had previously rejected such a proposal, but could feel pressure to relent to administration pressure in order to forestall across-the-board tax hikes in just a few days. The source familiar with the meeting told NBC's Peter Alexander and Kristen Welker that Obama asked Republicans what they would be willing to support, if not that proposal.

Amid negotiations toward a final deal, the House was set to return to Washington on Sunday at Boehner’s request, and remain at work through Jan. 2 -- the final day before the 112th Congress concludes and the next batch of lawmakers are sworn into office.

In the meanwhile, Obama voiced frustration toward the repeated pattern in Congress these past few years of lurching from crisis to crisis before reaching a last-minute deal to stave off catastrophe. 

“The American people are watching what we do here. Obviously, their patience is already thin. This is deja vu all over again,” Obama said. “America wonders why, for some reason, in this town you can’t get stuff done in an organized timetable ... The American people are not going to have any patience for a politically self-inflicted wound to our economy.”

House and Senate leaders from both parties will make their way to the White House this afternoon at President Barack Obama’s request for a last-ditch effort to reach an agreement to avoid the impending fiscal cliff.

Related: Obama bringing lawmakers to Oval Office for last-minute 'cliff' talks

The parties will enter the meeting seeming as far apart as ever on an agreement to avert the combination of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts set to take effect on Jan. 1. Republicans, led by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, say they have acted – by passing an extension of all of the expiring Bush tax cuts, an unpalatable proposition to Democrats – and now it’s the Senate’s turn.

The speaker’s office said Boehner “will continue to stress that the House has already passed legislation to avert the entire fiscal cliff and now the Senate must act” at tomorrow’s meeting.

And the Senate, led by Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is demanding that the GOP-held House assents to a bill that would allow taxes to rise on income over $250,000 per year.

This posturing by both parties amounts to little more than a stalemate in lawmakers’ effort to avert the fiscal cliff, just days before the deadline to forge a deal. With that in mind, here are the variables to watch, which could signal either breakthrough or failure on the fiscal cliff.

TONE: Hopes for a fiscal cliff compromise spiked on Nov. 16 when the same congressional leaders who are gathering Friday appeared jointly following their first meeting at the White House to hail the “constructive” conversation, all the while avoiding the usual partisan barbs.

Negotiations have deteriorated in the weeks since then, to say the least.

But with time running out before the end-of-year deadline, how or whether lawmakers speak following their meeting with Obama could speak volumes about the prospects for a deal.

If Boehner, Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., appear jointly – as they did in mid-November – it might portend good things about a potential resolution to the fiscal cliff.

But if they take to the microphones outside the West Wing separately (or issue statements), offering more vitriolic rhetoric and finger pointing, it would suggest bleak prospects for ongoing negotiations.

PROCESS: Much of the recent stalemate in Congress, as outlined above, involves whether it’s up to the House or the Senate to act first to resolve the fiscal cliff.

Recommended: Nearly out of time, lawmakers brace for blame on fiscal cliff

Neither party wants to be the one to make the first major concession, meaning that the House is looking to the Senate (and vice-versa) to be the first chamber to “jump,” so to speak.

Boehner has clearly and repeatedly signaled his desire to let the legislative process take its course. He argues that the Senate should amend any of the earlier tax bills that the Republican House has passed. The Senate could conceivably gut that legislation, replace it with any alternative that the upper chamber desires, and send it back to the House to see whether it can pass.

Alternatively, Reid is simply demanding that Republicans pass an existing Democratic tax bill, which would preserve existing tax rates on income under $250,000 a year. (Republicans counter that this law has a so-called “blue slip” problem –asserting that it’s procedurally flawed because tax bills cannot originate in the Senate, according to the Constitution.)

If the leaders emerge from their meeting at the White House with a clear idea of which chamber might act first, it would be a first step toward resolving the fiscal cliff by the New Year’s Eve deadline.

NUMBERS: Senate Democrats want the House to pass a bill that would preserve existing tax rates on incomes below $250,000.

Obama offered a deal to Boehner that would preserve income beneath a slightly higher threshold: $400,000 per year.

Boehner tried – and failed – to pass a bill (his “Plan B”) that would have kept tax rates the same for all income under $1 million.

If the leaders emerge from the White House today with some sort of number on which they have agreed, it could provide the framework for a final agreement.

Related: Boehner calls House back to Washington on Sunday

Just as important have been the topline numbers – that is, the target total savings in an agreement as collected from new taxes, or alternatively, spending cuts.

The president initially sought $1.6 trillion in new tax revenue before lowering that target to $1.4 trillion. Republicans offered $800 billion in revenue, which they said could be collected through tax reform that closes a number of deductions and loopholes.

At the same time, Obama’s last offer to Boehner included $1.2 trillion in spending cuts, including $400 billion in savings from entitlement programs.

An agreement of that scale seems unlikely with just a few days to go until the deadline, but an agreement on these topline numbers – either on a small deal, or a big deal – would suggest a degree of progress toward a solution.

CAN-KICKING: One option available to lawmakers would be to do something they’ve done all along: punt the problem to a later deadline.

In many respects, the fiscal cliff represents the ultimate example of lawmakers’ habit of kicking the can down the road. The automatic spending cuts that compose part of the cliff grew out of their inability to reach an agreement with Obama on taxes and spending during the debt ceiling fight in 2011. And the impending tax hikes are the byproduct of a two-year extension of the 2001 Bush tax cuts past their original expiration date in 2010.

But what Congress can do, it can also undo. And that means they could conceivably agree to delay the onset of the fiscal cliff for weeks, months or even a year to give themselves breathing room to negotiate a deal.

Furthermore, a decision to delay the fiscal cliff could mean that the contours of a fiscal cliff compromise have taken shape, and that lawmakers just need more time to hammer out the details. Alternatively, another can-kicking incident could rattle markets thanks to another instance of governing by lurching from crisis to crisis. Furthermore, it would do little to resolve the uncertainty on taxes that is hanging over many businesses heading into the new year.

THE FLANKS: Lastly, it’s important to keep an eye on the flanks in both parties – liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans – in terms of how they react to today’s meeting, and any possible deal that might emerge.

How many liberals or conservatives finish the day rattling their sabers, versus sitting on their hands?

The more anger there is on either flank toward any potential proposal, the more difficult it becomes for leaders in the House and Senate to find the necessary votes to approve an agreement – especially in such a politically polarized environment.

The importance of the flanks played vividly last week in the House, when conservatives refused to go along with Boehner’s “Plan B” (the proposal that would have allowed taxes to go up on millionaires) because, as the speaker put it, “they were dealing with the perception that somebody might accuse them of raising taxes.”

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

President Barack Obama returns from Christmas visit in Hawaii to the White House, Dec. 27, 2012.

Any final agreement will almost certainly have to involve both Democratic and Republican votes. But if either party’s base is incensed by Friday’s meeting at the White House, it would make mustering the political willpower to pass an agreement that much more difficult.

Updated 2:48 p.m. - The Senate’s top Democrat said Thursday that he was pessimistic that Washington could avoid the impending fiscal cliff, accusing House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, of running the lower chamber as a “dictatorship.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he was unsure there was enough time between now and the end of the year to reach a deal to avoid the combination of spending cuts and tax hikes set to take effect on Jan. 1. Reid said “the only viable escape route” was for the GOP-controlled House to give its approval to a Senate bill that would preserve existing tax rates on income under $250,000.

“Everyone knows that if they had brought up the Senate-passed bill, it would pass overwhelmingly. But the speaker says, no we can't do that,” Reid said on the Senate floor this morning. “It's [the House] being operated by a dictatorship of the speaker.”

In response, a spokesman for Boehner said in a statement,  "Senator Reid should talk less and legislate more. The House has already passed legislation to avoid the entire fiscal cliff.  Senate Democrats have not."

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Reid’s remarks suggest there has been no thaw in the stalemate that has plagued Washington for weeks, as consensus continues to elude Republicans and Democrats on averting the fiscal cliff. Amid the standoff, President Barack Obama called Reid and  Boehner (along with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell) late Wednesday from Hawaii. The president traveled back to the White House on Thursday following his brief family vacation.

"The leader is happy to review what the president has in mind, but to date, the Senate Democrat majority has not put forward a plan," said a spokesman for McConnell. "When they do, members on both sides of the aisle will review the legislation and make decisions on how best to proceed."

The discord almost gave way to an agreement on Thursday, as outgoing Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, R, posted on social media that he was rushing back to Washington to mull over a new offer Obama had made to Senate Republicans. Alas, those were false hopes; the administration and Senate Democrats flatly denied that they had made any new offer, and said that no agreement was imminent.

Both parties departed Washington on poor terms, a political chasm widened last week by Boehner’s unsuccessful pitch of “Plan B” legislation meant to extend tax rates on income under $1 million. Obama had vowed to veto it, and Boehner’s backup plan was generally regarded as more of a negotiating ploy than a comprehensive solution to the impending fiscal cliff. Nonetheless, conservatives balked at the speaker’s plan, laying bare Boehner’s ability to rally most Republicans behind any deal that even hinted at raising taxes.

And just five days before the onset of the fiscal cliff, Washington was locked in little more than a staring match between the House and Senate.

Republican leaders said in a joint statement on Wednesday that the Senate must amend Republican-passed legislation and return it to the House before any steps can be taken.

“The House will take this action on whatever the Senate can pass, but the Senate first must act,” the GOP leaders said.

But Reid said that arcane Senate rules prevented him from bringing up anything new for a vote. Republican leaders argue that the Senate bill also faces procedural flaws which would prevent it from consideration in the House; Democrats assert that the excuse is nonsense.

In the meantime, it appears that Thursday might be a lost day for negotiations. Obama landed in Washington around midday, but most House members remain in their districts. But Republican leaders notified their rank-and-file members that the House would be in session at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, and remain so for the remainder of the year. The Senate is in session on Thursday, but is concentrating on other unfinished business from this year.

The absence of the House, though, prompted Reid to lay into Republicans and fret that a fiscal cliff failure was all but inevitable.

“If we go over the cliff, and it looks like that's where we're headed, Mr. President – the House of Representatives as we speak with four days left after today before the first year aren't here with the speaker telling him he'll give them 48 hours’ notice," he said. "I can't imagine their consciences – they're out wherever they are around the country and we're here trying to get something done."

Mary F. Calvert / Reuters

The U.S. Capitol building is pictured as lawmakers return from the Christmas recess in Washington Dec. 27, 2012.

Amid the standoff, each party was left bracing for the potential political fallout associated with a fiscal cliff failure.

The bleak atmosphere in Washington appeared to be extending across the country, for instance. A Gallup poll conducted Dec. 21-22 – as lawmakers left the Capitol for the Christmas holiday with no deal in hand – found that optimism in leaders’ ability to reach a deal had declined; just 50 percent viewed a deal as somewhat or very likely, versus 48 percent who said a fiscal cliff agreement was not too or very unlikely.

And as Congress and the administration appears set to do anything but, 68 percent of Americans said they thought the principal actors should compromise, versus sticking rigidly to their ideological guideposts.