With less than two weeks until $85 billion in automatic budget cuts hit the U.S. Government, don't expect much from Congress on the subject this week, as the House and Senate are not in session. Lawmakers will return to the U.S. Capitol on February 25.
Senators may vote later that week on competing plans from the two parties to deal with the cuts, but there is no guarantee that anything will be passed by the Senate.
House GOP leaders have said they won't act on anything until the Senate does.
So, with this timeout in the action, let's take a quick look at what both parties would do at this point.
House Republicans acted last year on the sequester, voting two different times to approve a bill that would roll back scheduled cuts in the military and domestic programs and shift them instead to entitlement programs, cuts in the Obama health reform law, as well as a move to force federal employees and members of Congress to chip in more money for their retirement pensions.
You can see the full details of that House sequester bill, which was approved last May, at http://www.gop.gov/bill/112/2/hr5652.
No Democrats voted for that bill in the House, while 16 Republicans voted it against the plan as well.
In other words, the House GOP plan isn't exactly seen as having bipartisan drawing power.
Meanwhile, House and Senate Democrats have unveiled plans in recent days which provide a package that is half spending cuts and half tax increases; the new taxes would mainly be on more wealthy Americans in the form of a new "Buffett Rule" plan.
The spending cuts would be half from the military and half from farm support subsidies.
House Democrats also would repeal tax subsidies for the oil and gas industry; you can see their plan here.
The details of the Senate Democratic plan were spelled out in one of my blogs last week.
While we have not had a vote on either plan laid out by the Democrats, it would not be a stretch to say that Republicans are unlikely to agree with the tax increases and the military budget cuts; also, cuts in farm subsidies would tend to hit in areas that are dominated by the GOP (farm country/Red states).
Senate Republicans are expected to unveil their own plan early next week.
What's the bottom line? Neither party really has offered anything that the other party might want to vote for, though there are some individual lawmakers working on plans who believe they can bridge the gap - but it's a big gap between Democrats and Republicans.
And that's one main reason why some in Washington, D.C. believe the cuts will go into effect on March 1, and then the Congress will fight about how to alter those cuts after that deadline.
Your President's Day assignment - how would you forge a truly bipartisan deal, or would you just let the across the board cuts take effect on March 1? Tell me below.
