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With less than two weeks until the sequestration cuts are set to start taking place, Congress is currently away from Washington on a long President’s Day break. They are not set to return until next week, which would give them less than a week to draft and pass a bill to stop the cuts.
While it is possible that key members could negotiate a deal while the rest of Congress is away, there is zero indication that is happening. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has firmly come out against any 11th-hour negotiation and House Speaker John Boehner does not want to take part in direct negotiations with Obama. In his remarks today President Obama made it clear that his door is open to coming up with a short-term alternative, but Republicans have shown little interest in working to find a compromise.
There are only 10 days until the sequestration cuts start and for most of that time Congress will not even be in Washington. Currently there is no bipartisan bill to deal with the sequester. There is not even the rough outline of a possible agreement. There is not even any real bipartisan negotiations taking place. There doesn’t even seem to be agreement from both sides that it would be acceptable to use a short term fix.
The chances that the sequester cuts will happen is currently very high and growing more likely with every passing day.
Photo by .m for matthijs under Creative Commons license
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Isn’t there another can to be kicked? Surely they could deal with this in June. Right?
My guess is that the sequester will go into effect and that Obama’s admin team will allocate the cuts to those areas that will affect the public the most – create pain and the public will yell! This falls into the same category as “if you don’t want to hear the answer, don’t ask the question” The President proposed this and it was a very bad proposal that he does not now want to live with. If that team were not so political, and were a little more interested in the welfare of everyday citizens, we would not be seeing this impending mess.
Kabuki.
By the time they get around to cutting “entitlements,” people will be so over this crap that it will be anti-climactic, maybe even a relief.
People will be so ground down by the economy and all that gasping about financial cliffs and unthinkable sequesters that they won’t have the energy to tar and feather anyone.