REPORT: As Pain From Spending Cuts Grows, Media Coverage Drops

CRAIG HARRINGTON & ALBERT KLEINE/Media Matters For America

Media coverage of the automatic spending cuts commonly known as sequestration has tapered off since the policies went into effect on March 1. This drop in coverage comes as more Americans report having personally felt the effects of the cuts.

More Americans Report Being Personally Affected By Spending Cuts

New Poll Reveals 37 Percent Of Americans Feel Negative Impact From Sequestration. A May 24 ABC News/Washington Post poll showed 37 percent of Americans reported feeling the effects of sequestration, up 12 percentage points from a poll conducted in March. From the poll:

Thirty-seven percent in the latest ABC News/ Washington Post poll say they've been negatively impacted by the budget cuts, up from 25 percent in March. As previously, about half of those affected say the harm has been "major." [ABC News/Washington Post, 5/24/13]

Poll Also Revealed Shift In Public Support For Cuts

Fifty-Six Percent Of Americans Now Disapprove Of Sequestration. The ABC News/Washington Post poll also revealed a sizeable and growing majority -- 56 percent -- opposed to the across the board spending cuts, a significant change compared to a March poll that showed the public supported sequestration by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio, at 61-33 percent. [ABC News/Washington Post, 5/24/13; ABC News/Washington Post, 3/6/13]

Media Coverage Of Spending Cuts Drops

Media Mentions Of Sequestration Fall. From March 4 to May 26, segments on broadcast and cable evening news mentioning the across the board spending cuts dropped precipitously. In the week of March 4 to March 10, 105 total segments mentioned sequestration, while during the week of May 20 to May 26, only seven segments mentioned sequestration.

Fluctuations In Sequestration Coverage Due To Major News Events. Changes in the data that deviate from the steady downward trend in media coverage of sequestration are largely due to major news events. During the week of April 15 to April 21, sequestration coverage dropped due to the focus on the April 15 Boston bombings. The spike in coverage during the week of April 22 to April 28 is due to media's focus on Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) furloughs and ensuing airport delays.

Cuts To Vital Programs, Services Still Happening

Cuts Continue Across The Country Despite Public Opposition. As compiled by economist Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), cuts to programs such as Head Start, Meals on Wheels, Medicare-funded cancer treatments, USDA food inspection, public defense, and scientific and medical research are all either in effect or scheduled for the foreseeable future. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is preparing for employee furloughs throughout the summer, despite what is expected to be an active Atlantic hurricane season. [On The Economy, 5/22/13]

Methodology

Media Matters conducted a Nexis search of transcripts of evening (defined as 5 p.m. through 11 p.m.) programs on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and network broadcast news from March 4 through May 26.  We identified and reviewed all segments using the following search terms: ((automatic or across the board or mandatory or forced) and (budget cuts or spending cuts)) or sequest!

The following programs were included in the data: World News with Diane Sawyer, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Evening News (CBS), Face the Nation, Nightly News with Brian Williams, Meet the Press with David Gregory, Fox News Sunday, The Situation Room, Erin Burnett OutFront, Anderson Cooper 360, Piers Morgan Live, The Five, Special Report with Bret Baier, The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity, On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Politics Nation with Al Sharpton, All In with Chris Hayes, The Rachel Maddow Show, and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell. For shows that air re-runs (such asAnderson Cooper 360 and Hardball with Chris Matthews), only the first airing was included in data retrieval.

GOP Senator Embraces Sequestration: It Has ‘Actually Worked’

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

As communities across the nation struggle with the consequences of sequestration cuts to pre-school programs, school aide, unemployment benefits, and jobs, some Republicans in Congress are trumpeting the automatic reductions as sound fiscal policy.

Appearing on KHTE’s “The Alice Stewart Show” Friday, Sen. John Boozman (R-AR) argued that sequestration is “actually working” and compared the agencies who are complaining about the spending reductions to spoiled children:

BOOZMAN: I really think the FAA and many of the other agencies are trying to figure out how they can make things as painful as possible to the public. And it reminds me of a spoiled brat kid. You take away some of his stuff and, you know, he starts screaming. They don’t want want any cuts period. [...]

I think that you have to have some kind of a spending cap in place. You know, you can knock sequestration or not knock it, but it’s worked in the sense that hit has forced reduction in spending. And I’ve been here 11 years and this is the first time I’ve seen it in this manner, in the sense that it is something that’s actually working.

In reality, overall government spending has dramatically plateaued under President Obama, a trend economists believe is holding back economic recovery.

On Friday, new data from the Commerce Department reiterated that sequestration is only making things worse. U.S. economic growth rebounded to 2.5 percent in the first-quarter of 2013, 0.5 percentage points lower than analysts had projected. “We saw some good resilience from the consumer, particularly given all the headwinds,” Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York, told Bloomberg. “The weakness in government spendingis an issue. It’s going to be tough to repeat the first-quarter performance this quarter.”

In the first three months of the year, “outlays declined for the 10th time in the past 11 quarters, restraining growth,” Bloomberg notes. The economy may get worse before it gets better, as the the nation has “barely only begun to feel the impacts of sequestration’s automatic spending cuts.”

UPDATE

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) told The Wichita Eagle: “In my judgment, the pain [from the sequester] has not been too great.”

UPDATE

Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) at the Heritage Foundation: “I think it’s the first time we’ve saved money in Washington D.C., I think we need to move on from this subject and talk about how we can get to a balanced budget in the next ten years and stop trying to find ways to bring the sequester up in every conversation.”

UPDATE

Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) on the House floor: “Even though sequestration is painful, it is working.”

Sequester Makes TEApublicans Happy: They Get Off Causing America Problems

 E. Henry Schoenberger/Americans against the tea party:

The impact of blind budget cuts is beginning to grind on America.  But Teapublicans are the happiest when their fellow Americans are in pain.  Like dying without health insurance, or starving without food stamps, or not having a job because they vote against jobs bills, or hoping bridges will crumble – which will not affect them because they have god and Jesus on their side.

•  Sequestration is now affecting medicine and promising research.

Sequestration Stupidity Is Genetic, Hitting Front-Line Medical …

St. Louis, a center for cutting-edge medical research, will be hit hard by sequestration cuts.

ST. LOUIS — Of all the blinkered buzz-saw cuts in this year’s $85 billion spending sequestration, perhaps none is as counterproductive — or as flat-out boneheaded — as the one now hitting medical research under way in a refurbished industrial expanse of central St. Louis.

Sequester cuts to the rapidly developing process of turning genetic research into a major 21st-century industry — and saving lives and health care costs — are the equivalent of trying to build the Interstate Highway System with no ramps or the transcontinental railroad without the final miles in the middle.

In one of the most farsighted and successful government projects ever, Congress in 1990 authorized a 15-year, American-led effort to map the human genome and to make the results available, under careful conditions to protect pure science and personal privacy, to the world. Completed in 2003 at a cost of $3 billion, the Human Genome Project has now spawned a range of technologies — from tailored drug therapies for cancer to preventative testing to the new big-data discipline of bioinformatics — which not only are generating jobs, but which hold the promise of dramatically reducing health care costs….

• Sequestration will increase unemployment.  A simple thought that the Teapublican Koch-pawns could care less about – unless it is them.

• It will cause a decrease in defense/Pentagon spending but not result in rational cuts; because the Teapublicans and the Dems who cater to neocons will continue to make awful allocations which inure to the benefit of the industrial military complex at the continuing expense of we the people.  So there will not be a shutdown of bases in Germany or Europe or Japan.  Senseless spending will continue unfortunately.

The Pentagon’s Sequestration Opportunity

“…First, there is a tendency for policymakers to target “low-hanging fruit” such as major weapons programs, force structure and end strength. After all, shedding programs and capabilities can often produce large savings quickly. In contrast, some of the most-needed reforms in the areas of military and civilian compensation and excess bases often take years to realize savings. Moreover, bitter political fights such as the controversial 2005 base closure round still linger in the minds of many on Capitol Hill. The prospect of reforming military compensation – even when conducted in a way so as to not affect currently serving troops and retirees – is always a political lightning rod because politicians refuse to use it as an opportunity to add new benefits while simultaneously changing others. …”

• It is not going to stop government waste by the Congressional Blockaders of the public good.

I Survived Sequestration

 National Review

“This week marks the one-month anniversary of one of the most terrifying events in American history: the sequester. So, with great trepidation, …

“…There has been some real pain, of course, depending on where you look. The White House cancelled some public tours. The National Archives was forced to return to the hours of operation it maintained prior to 2008. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s staffapparently could no longer afford “high quality” meals in the Capitol cafeteria. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released thousands of undocumented immigrants from detention centers — wait, actually, that happened before the sequester started. Meanwhile, some federal officials continue to warn that eventually terrible things really will happen…. The dreaded furloughs of federal workers have turned out to be less than advertised. …”

Teapublicans just want to make the government smaller, they don’t care who it hurts, as long as the Koch Bros and all their other ultra-rich sociopathic greedy narcissist benefactors approve.  And of course Jesus, whose Golden Rule is not for the religious wrong wingers.  The fallout is not over.

For more of Henry’s work, check out his blog The 5th Estate

Buy Henry’s brilliant book from Amazon, about which David Satterfield, former Business Editor of the Miami Herald and 2 times Pulitzer Prize Winner, said this:

Low-Income Kids Are Being Kicked Out Of Their Preschool Programs Thanks To Sequestration

By Annie-Rose Strasser/Think Progress

The early childhood education program Head Start provides educational opportunities specifically to low-income kids. But 70,000 of those students will lose the opportunity to be in the program as a result of the drastic reductions in funding triggered by sequestration.

Reports are beginning to roll in about how children will bear the brunt of Congressional inaction. In several states, programs have to decide where they will make the cuts. In some cases, that means picking which students will be kept in the program, and which will be forced to leave:

INDIANA: “At least two Indiana Head Start programs have resorted to a random drawing to determine which three-dozen preschool students will be removed from the education program for low-income families, a move officials said was necessary to limit the impact of mandatory across-the-board federal spending cuts. [Programs] in Columbus and Franklin are losing two classrooms, meaning 36 children won’t be able to return after Friday. Last week, a lottery drawing determined which children would remain in the Columbus program, and Franklin had scheduled its lottery for Tuesday night.” [Indiana Journal Gazette, March 13, 2013.]

TENNESSEE: “A letter went out recently to parents and guardians with children in the program stating that the cuts have affected the Head Start program in several ways. One, and perhaps the move that hurts more families than any, is that all bus transportation will discontinue on March 18. The letter was sent out shortly after the sequestration took place on March 1 to give the parents a couple of weeks to try to find alternate means of transportation. According to the letter, ‘Every effort will be made to reinstate transportation services starting in August.’” [Clairebornprogress.net, March 13,2012]

WASHINGTON: ‘We’ll [lose] money for the child care food program. And there may be dollars lost from our partnership with the Spokane School District for serving kids with disabilities,’ said [The Director of Program Services, David Colburn] Colburn.[...] Spokane Head Start currently serves 900 families and there are a thousand more on the waiting list. Cutting kids already in the program is considered a last resort but leaders say it’s simply unavoidable.” [KREM.com, March 1, 2013.]

PENNSYLVANIA: Jody Thomas, a local Pennsylvania Head Start Director, “said, the centers provide lunch and snacks to the children, and with a funding cut,Head Start would not be buying as much food from grocery stores in the area, or as much cleaning or other supplies. Less fuel also could be purchased for Headstart’s buses, with the cuts, she noted.[...] At the Troy Head Start, Laura Steele, a teacher for the Troy 1 Head Start, said that she was concerned about the cuts.[...] ‘I am afraid we won’t be able to service as many children as we do now,’ she said. ‘We are going to try our best to keep the high-quality programs we have.’” [Pennsylvania Daily Review, March 14, 2013.]

FLORIDA: “Commissioners are expected to discuss the shortfall at a meeting April 2, but administrators have tentatively proposed a series of services that could be eliminated to help bridge the financial gap.[..,] Under the proposal,buses that take children to and from the county’s Head Start centers would be eliminated. Roughly 400 of the 2,296 children enrolled in the county’s Head Start program rely on the buses to get to the centers, Van Arnam said. The cut would result in the elimination of 14 jobs.” [Palm Beach Post, March 13, 2013.]

Preschool is not an extracurricular activity for kids. It’s been proven to help kids learn to socialize and become well-adjusted citizens. A study in California found that “our society receives $9 in benefits for every $1 invested in Head Start children.” A Center for American Progress report found that children who don’t receive early childhood education are 40 percent more likely to become a parent as a teenager, 25 percent more likely to drop out of school, and 70 percent more likely to be arrested for a violent crime.

Cable News Obsessively Covers Cuts To White House Tours, Virtually Ignores Cuts To Programs For The Poor

By Aviva Shen and Adam Peck/Think Progress 

Thanks to Congressional gridlock, automatic budget cuts took effect 14 days ago, threatening 700,000 jobs and gutting fundsfor vital programs in housing assistance, early childhood education, disaster relief, and national security. Secret Service staffing was also impacted, prompting the cancellation of White House tours last week. Republicans immediately attacked the decision as a political move designed to turn the public against the sequester and 14 Republican senators signed a letter demanding information.

The media has also latched on to preserve the White House tours, while largely ignoring other much more devastating sequester cuts. As Ari Melber of The Nation pointed out on Wednesday, there are 12,000 news stories concerning White House tours and less than 1,000 about the sequester’s impact on housing assistance programs, which disproportionately affect low-income Americans.

ThinkProgress examined this trend on three major cable news networks — Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC — since March 6. White House tours were mentioned 33 times as often (Fox News had 163 segments, CNN had 59, and MSNBC had 42) as mentions of other sequester impacts hitting the poor. Any discussion of sequestration’s steep cuts to housing assistance, food stamps, and Head Start early education was virtually nonexistent on all 3 networks in the same time frame. Fox News mentioned Head Start three times, ignoring housing and food stamps entirely; MSNBC mentioned Head Start 4 times, food stamps once, and did not cover housing assistance cuts at all. CNN stayed completely silent on all three issues:

While covering budget cuts, cable news channels have also largely avoided discussing military tuition assistance programs, which were suspended by the Marine Corps and the Army shortly after sequestration. CNN and MSNBC each mentioned the cuts to tuition assistance once since March 6, while Fox News took the lead with 11 segments.

The media’s silence on the most brutal sequester cuts is well in line with the fourth estate’s normal approach to poverty. During the 2012 presidential campaign, just .2 percent of campaign coverage by major TV, radio, and print outlets addressed poverty in any substantive way. More recently, the media mostly ignored the effects of spending cuts in the so-called “fiscal cliff” at the end of 2012, preferring to discuss tax hikes instead.

In response to the highly publicized backlash over White House tours, Obama is now signallingsome tours may resume.

Millions of America’s Gun Nuts Aren’t Hiding Their Yearning for Civil War

By: Dennis S/politicususa

This country is in trouble;  not the sequester or the debt ceiling or closing down the country. The Fed and Congress can reverse those issues in a finger snap. Our trouble is coming from the barrel of a gun from rabid paranoids and the people “on the take.” Include also, terrified legislators staring down that barrel from clever manipulators like Karl Rove, in the employ of filthy rich maggots with no conscience.

The farce that is the congressional reaction to the Sandy Hook Bushmaster Children’s Slaughter (BCS) continues unabated. A Senate Judiciary Panel was holding a February 27 hearing on a bill laughingly described as an assault weapons ban (with a mere 2,200 exceptions). Before them was a tearful construction worker Neil Heslin. He’s the father of 1 of the 20 BCS child victims, cherubic, six-year-old Jesse Lewis Heslin. He held up a framed photo portrait of Jesse sitting on his dad’s lap, the picture the very quintessence of a loving parent-child relationship.

Neither the grieving parent or the portrait seemed to emotionally change a single expression or mind of the right-wing gun worshiping members of the panel. Most of whom were wondering which fancy restaurant the gun lobbyists would spring for after the ordeal of hearing yet another sob story was over.

Heslin had also appeared as one of numerous invitees to a series of General Assembly Task Force hearings held in several rooms of the Legislative Office Building about five weeks prior to the Senate Judiciary Panel. An estimated 1,500 NRA gun nuts were out in force. Some of them split off into the room where Heslin was testifying. He brought a different photo of his son to this inquiry, hoping a human face, especially such a precious young human face, would encourage the legislators to do something of substance. The NRAssholes in the room heckled Mr. Heslin still deep in his grief.

This country is in trouble;  not the sequester or the debt ceiling or closing down the country. The Fed and Congress can reverse those issues in a finger snap. Our trouble is coming from the barrel of a gun from rabid paranoids and the people “on the take.” Include also, terrified legislators staring down that barrel from clever manipulators like Karl Rove, in the employ of filthy rich maggots with no conscience.

The farce that is the congressional reaction to the Sandy Hook Bushmaster Children’s Slaughter (BCS) continues unabated. A Senate Judiciary Panel was holding a February 27 hearing on a bill laughingly described as an assault weapons ban (with a mere 2,200 exceptions). Before them was a tearful construction worker Neil Heslin. He’s the father of 1 of the 20 BCS child victims, cherubic, six-year-old Jesse Lewis Heslin. He held up a framed photo portrait of Jesse sitting on his dad’s lap, the picture the very quintessence of a loving parent-child relationship.

Neither the grieving parent or the portrait seemed to emotionally change a single expression or mind of the right-wing gun worshiping members of the panel. Most of whom were wondering which fancy restaurant the gun lobbyists would spring for after the ordeal of hearing yet another sob story was over.

Heslin had also appeared as one of numerous invitees to a series of General Assembly Task Force hearings held in several rooms of the Legislative Office Building about five weeks prior to the Senate Judiciary Panel. An estimated 1,500 NRA gun nuts were out in force. Some of them split off into the room where Heslin was testifying. He brought a different photo of his son to this inquiry, hoping a human face, especially such a precious young human face, would encourage the legislators to do something of substance. The NRAssholes in the room heckled Mr. Heslin still deep in his grief.

There are about 90 proposed bills out there. Most of them are centered on background checks and outing those with mental disabilities as societies’ pariahs and modern-day lepers. All the better to take no responsible action against handguns or most semi-autos.

The mentally ill account for less than 10% of the problem. That’s 90% left ignored. Households with guns statistics show that a family member, friend or acquaintance is 43% more likely to be killed in that house than in a dwelling that is gun-free. About half of intruder killings are drug-related. A vast majority of those breaking through the door or window with mayhem in their hearts know their victims. Despite fanciful gun nut claims to the contrary, several hundred “stand your ground” defensive killings by homeowners meet the criteria as justified; though that number will grow as more states adopt legislation that says it’s perfectly OK to off that annoying neighbor banging on your door for the return of his lawnmower. “That’ll teach the pushy bastard.”

Here’s a small sampling of the most recent gun killings in my hood with a handful of national homicides thrown in for good measure.

A self-styled pimp was arrested in LA after firing a fatal shot in Vegas a few days earlier into the car driven by a rapper. The pair had argued outside a strip joint and the pimp caught up with the rapper’s Maserati at an intersection and killed him, causing the car to veer into a taxi, resulting in a fire that killed 2 more people.

A couple days before the Vegas mess, a college kid was shot dead at a residence hall near Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina. The 19-year-old was shot 4 or 5 times. Authorities arrested a 20-year-old local bad ass March 1st and added murder to his rap sheet.

An 81-year-old Carolina coot shot a repo man to death in Sumpter County as he attempted to tow away the old fools’ vehicle. In the same county a women was shot and killed trying to break up a fight. An 18-year-old has been arrested and charged with murder. A Connecticut grandmother committed suicide after she took a revolver from the family residence, picked up her 2 year-old and six month-old grandsons from day care and later shot them both dead. The family knew she was bipolar and mentally troubled. Yet, there was a gun;  just sitting there.

Speaking of young, young children, a 4 year-old Houston tot found his sleeping dad’s stolen .40-caliber handgun and shot fatally shot himself in the stomach while the punk father slept a few feet away. Police found drug paraphernalia and weed in the house.

Every edition of my local paper features one or more gun death headlines. Another shooting either within a 30 mile radius of my residence or somewhere in the U.S. Just another day of the “take a life” culture that is America. And every day another bunch of extremist legislators and a few DINO’s defend with every fiber of their being, any attempts to kill fewer children and adults with guns.

Gun manufacturer’s are tightening the screws to preserve their evil craft. Dozens of gun manufacturers now refuse to sell to state law enforcement agencies because their state governments are “restricting the Second Amendment.”

Ronnie Barrett is Chairman and CEO of Barrett Firearms. His is quite a story. He’s been honored as a civilian who created a gun especially for the U.S. military and put together a commercial 82A1 from scratch. But I have to leave my admiration at the door because of statements like the one that appeared on the company’s Facebook page as reproduced on the Blaze website. “Barrett opposes those who are illegally disarming the American public from their efficient arms and creating superior armed elitist government agencies.”

As remarkable as the development of the commercial 82A1 .50-caliber might have been this weapon has no business in civilian hands. Which is what the California legislature realized in barring it from private ownership. It’s a vicious firearm with extraordinary killing power, close or at great distances. It will pierce any armored vehicle short of a tank.

So there you have it,  the latest movement designed not only to arm the citizenry like so many rogue pirates, but disarm law enforcement. About 50 manufacturers have signed on with momentum supposedly growing.

Of the 310 million guns in America, I’d guess right wing racist, paranoid radicals own at least three-quarters of them. What does that tell you? It appears that a fair percentage of the population wants a Civil War redux. Whether we’ve reached the point of no return is open to debate. An across-the-board Democratic victory in 2014 would end that debate.

VIDEO: How The GOP Constantly Pretends Spending Cuts Haven’t Happened

By Jeff Spross/Think Progress

Barring a miracle of bipartisan cooperation over the next 12 hours, the sequester — a series of across-the-board spending cuts — will kick in tonight.

Part of the Budget Control Act of 2011, the sequester will likely shave 700,000 jobs and 0.6 percent worth of growth off the economy. Its cuts were designed to be so crude and damaging they would incentivize all sides to replace it with more well-thought out deficit reduction.

But thanks to the GOP’s single-minded fixation on spending cuts over tax increases, that effort failed. Republicans spent the last two years treating every debate over the deficit as if it were occurring in a historical vacuum, accusing Obama of failing his own commitment to balance, repeatedly scoffing at new tax revenue, and insisting that “it’s finally time” to “get serious” about cutting spending, even as trillions of dollars in cuts mounted.

In short, the GOP has repeatedly thrown the spending cuts from each previous deal down the memory hole, demanding more and more while claiming that Obama and Democrats have unreasonably wanted to balance those cuts with new revenue. ThinkProgress has the video report. Watch it:

Between the spring 2011 budget fight, the debt ceiling debacle, and the so-called “fiscal cliff,” the United States has cut almost $1.5 trillion in spending over the next decade, plus saving roughly $200 billion more in lower interest payments.

In fact, at the Wall Street Journal breakfast featured in the video, reporter Lori Montgomerybrought up all these previous cuts point blank with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). Ryan’s rejoinder encapsulated the entire bizarre kabuki dance: “That was last session. We’re going forward now.” Montgomery and the other reporters literally busted out laughing in response. (Ryan’s logic doesn’t even work on its on terms. The new tax revenues in the fiscal cliff deal were part of the last congressional session as well, but he wants to count those.)

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the budget ledger, the country will raise only $630 billion in new tax revenue over the next decade. That’s the context in which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) insists “the tax issue is finished,” even as both he and Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) claim to be seeking a “balanced” agreement. As a result, everything from Medicare, to the military, food safety, air traffic control, nutritional support for women and infants, disaster relief, law enforcement, and health research looks likely to get the axe.

The Morning Plum: The false equivalence pundits are part of the problem

By Greg Sargent/The Washington Post

The battle over the sequester has sparked a corollary argument over the proper role of pundits in assigning blame in political standoffs of this type. A number of us have argued that the facts plainly reveal that Republicans are far more to blame than Obama and Democrats for the current crisis. The GOP’s explicit position is that no compromise solution of any kind is acceptable — this must be resolved only with 100% of the concessions being made by Democrats — which means any compromise Dems put forth is by definition a nonstarter at the outset.

Analysts reluctant to embrace this conclusion — an affliction I’ve called the “centrist dodge” — have adopted several techniques. One is to pretend Dems haven’t offered any compromise solution, when in fact they have. A second is to argue that, okay, Dems have offered a compromise while Republicans haven’t, but Dems haven’t gone far enough towards the middle ground, so both sides are still to blame for the impasse. (The problem with this dodge is that it fails to acknowledge that Republicans themselves have openly stated that there is no distance to which Dems could go to win GOP cooperation, short of giving them everything they want.)

We’re now seeing a third technique appear: Acknowledge that Republicans are the uncompromising party, but assert that it’s ultimately on the President to figure out a way to either force Republicans to drop their intransigence or to otherwise “lead” them out if it.

Case in point: David Brooks. Last week Brooks was widely criticized for a “pox on both house” column in which he based his entire argument on the falsehood that Obama has no plan. Brooks repented for his error, and today he offers a good faith effort to describe what he’d like Obama to do to change things. It boils down to this:

My dream Obama wouldn’t be just one gladiator in the zero-sum budget wars. He’d transform the sequester fight by changing the categories that undergird it. He’d possess the primary ingredient of political greatness: imagination. The great presidents, like Teddy Roosevelt, see situations differently. They ask different questions. History pivots around their terms.

I’ll leave it to you to decide whether the prescriptions Brooks offers would really change the current dynamic, but at bottom, the suggestion that it’s all on the president to figure out a way to persuade Republicans to drop their intransigence is still a dodge. The idea that the President can necessarily bend Congress to his will is indeed a “dream.” It doesn’t reckon with the most fundamental question at the heart of all of this: What if there is nothing whatsoever that can be done by the president or anyone else to break the GOP out of its no-compromising stance?  This isn’t an unreasonable reading of the situation; it’s what Republicans themselves have confirmed, publicly and on the record — they will not concede a penny in new revenues, no matter what. And if this is the case — if the fundamental problem is that Republicans really do prefer the sequester to any compromise — isn’t it incumbent on commentators to explain this clearly and forthrightly to their readers?

As Josh Marshall puts it:

Over the last few days, as it’s become increasingly clear that the sequester cuts probably really will happen, the big name pundits are coming forward and complaining that President Obama needs to step forward and ‘exercise leadership’ and solve the problem.

It’s all similar to what we saw in the fiscal cliff negotiations. Official Washington is accustomed to having a Democratic safety net — not cash transfers for those who fall through the cracks of the market economy — but that Democrats will come in and solve crises created by GOP government by crisis. When the Democrats or the Democrats’ party leader — in this case, the President — won’t do that, everyone freaks out.

The argument now is basically that the president is the father who must make his problem children behave. Only this is worse than just a dodge. Lots and lots of people are going to get hurt by the sequester. Anyone who helps deflect blame from Republicans — in the full knowledge that they are the primary obstacle to the compromise we need to prevent serious damage from being done to the country — is unwittingly helping to enable their intransigence.

* GOP won’t accept any compromise solution: Last night, Lindsey Graham turned heads when he said on CNN that he’s willing to accept $600 billion in new revenues along with spending cuts to avert the sequester. This perfectly illustrates what I noted above: After all, no GOP leaders agree with Graham; meanwhile, Democratic leaders do agree with Graham that a mix is the best way to go.

* Another poll finds GOP will take blame for sequester: A new Post poll finds that 45 percent of Americans will blame Congressional Republicans if and when the sequester hits, versus only 32 percent who will blame Obama. Strikingly, 52 percent of moderates will blame Republicans; only 24 percent will blame Obama.

A lot of this is probably driven by the fact that Obama’s general standing with the public is far better; the question is whether that dynamic will hold as the cuts kick in over time.

* Americans think sequester will damage economy, military: Also key from the new Post poll: 60 percent think it will have a “major effect” on the economy, and 62 percent think the effect will be “negative.” Fifty five percent say it will have a “major effect” on the military.

* Don’t bite on the GOP’s sequester ruse, Dems: As expected, Republicans are laying plans to “offer” a proposal to the administration that would allow agency heads to have discretion over where the sequester cuts are allotted. Senator Tim Kaine gets at the irony underlying this proposal:

“These guys bash the president nonstop.Then they are going to take the power of the purse and say, ‘We are so unable to do our job we are going to give you complete flexibility to do it’?”

As I’ve noted before, his alternative would transfer ownership of the cuts to Obama, and would create a false sense that they are not all that threatening, allowing Republicans to evade some political responsibility for them — even as it doesn’t do much of anything to mitigate the actual damage they would do.

* Yes, sequester would mean major cuts to government: Glenn Kessler explains why the claim that the sequester would cut “only” 2.5 percent out of the government, which is widely cited by Republicans, is completely misleading, and why the cuts will be far bigger in practice. While Kessler also finds that there are problems with the White House’s predictions of doom, it is overwhelmingly clear that the sequester has the potential to do deep and serious damage.

* Virginia residents increasingly anxious about sequester: The Post has a nicely reported piece digging into one Virginia community’s increasing anxiety about the coming cuts. This is only a glimpse of what may be to come when the cuts actually begin to make their impact felt. What this article really drives home is that, as much as people hate government in the abstract, when specific programs are threatened people suddenly love government spending.

* And there’s real bipartisan consensus behind gay marriage: It’s good to hear that dozens of Republican officials, some of them very high profile, have signed a brief to be submitted to the Supreme Court that argues in favor of gay marriage. And yet as a whole the GOP has not evolved on this question. It’s one of the starkest tests yet of the party’s ability to adapt to the country’s changing politics and culture, since gay marriage has broad bipartisan support and is strongly embraced by young voters, a growing share of the electorate.

What else?

Why Everything Republicans Are Saying About The Sequester Is Wrong

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

Barring a last minute Congressional compromise, $85 billion in automatic across-the-board cuts will go into effect in the next 72 hours as a result of the sequester mechanism included in the 2011 Budget Control Act.

Republicans — many of whom voted for the BCA and have for years championed deep spending reductions — are hoping to blame the Democrats and President Obama for the consequences of the cuts, claiming that if “bad things” happen as a result of sequester, “it’s because [Obama] wants them to.” As the nation moves closer to the March 1 deadline, here is your guide to the GOP spin on the sequester:

1. We need spending cuts to get the economy going. The GOP claims that government spending is out of control and reason that reducing spending would spur greater economic growth. But government expenditures have grown at its slowest pace since the Eisenhower administration under President Obama and the latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office show that the nation’s deficits have shrunk by trillions of dollars, and the debt is close to being stabilized as a percentage of the economy. Austerity measures have dragged down economic growth in Europe and some economists argue that sequestration won’t actually lead to substantial shrinking of the deficit, since fiscal contraction caused by sequestration is likely to slow economic growth, reducing tax revenue and preventing meaningful deficit reduction.

2. Agencies need more flexibility to avoid cuts in crucial services. After backing sequestration mechanism — the harmful cuts that were designed to force lawmakers to reach a comprehensive deal to reduce the deficit with additional revenue and spending reductions — Republicans are now considering legislation that would leave Obama and federal agencies with the responsibility of carving out waste and unnecessary spending while preserving critical government services. In reality, the problem isn’t one of authority. Programs will see their budgets cut by anywhere between 2 and 10 percent and most will be unable to salvage services and only target inefficiencies. The Republican replacement is just another effort to implement spending reductions without increasing revenues and blame Obama for the consequences.

3. The federal spending will still be higher next year. This claim is technically true, but only because the sequester target the growth of government programs: they will grow at a slower pace as a result of the spending reductions. This is simply how federal budgeting works. The sequester will reduce spending as percentage of the economy, lowering discretionary spendingto historic lows.

4. These are very modest cuts. The reductions may not mean much for wealthy Congressman, but states will lose funding for education, job training, health care, and a plethora of other services, jeopardizing assistance for low-income and middle class families alike and threatening the economic recovery. The cuts will also undermine everything from border security to the screening of containers. Estimates show that the sequester would reduce 2013 gross domestic product (GDP) growth by half a percentage point, and would cost the economyclose to one million jobs in the next two years.

5. Democrats have rejected the GOP’s sequester replacement bills. Republicans in the House passed a sequester replacement bill in the last Congress that doesn’t raise any new revenue and includes cuts in domestic programs like food stamps, Medicaid, and the social services block grant (which, among other things, funds Meals on Wheels). The GOP has not introduced a replacement bill in this current Congress and refuses to compromise on the Democrats’ balanced approach of higher revenues and more spending cuts. Budget deals cut over the last year have already reduced a substantial amount of spending and even with the revenue included in the fiscal cliff deal, there have been $2.50 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue signed into law by Obama.

Rep. Adam Schiff to GOP: It’s not your messaging, it’s your policies

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California said Thursday that Republicans were unpopular simply because they were advocating unpopular policies.

“It’s crazy and what is so frustrating about it is we are now poised to recover economically if Congress would just get out of the way,” he said on the radio program Talking Liberally.

Schiff described the looming sequester as a “man-made crisis.” The sequester, huge across-the-board budget cuts to domestic and defense programs, was enacted as part of a deal to raise the federal debt ceiling in 2011.

Schiff said House Republicans had a “schizophrenic message” regarding the sequester. Though they have tirelessly argued for spending cuts, many Republicans recently launched a campaign to blame Obama for the sequester. Meanwhile, other Republicans have downplayed the expected consequences of the sequester.

“The GOP is not going to win this,” the Democratic congressman said. “They keep thinking it is a problem with how they are communicating their message. We do get the message. It is just not a particularly good message, and it is not the right issue, and it is not the right priorities for the country.”

A Bloomberg National poll conducted last week found that a majority of Americans supported Obama’s proposal to increase investment over Republican’s proposal to cut spending. Fifty-five percent of those surveyed had a favorable view of the President, while only 35 percent had a favorable view of the Republican Party.

Watch video, uploaded to YouTube, below: