“House Speaker John Boehner has dug in,” Politico writes. “If the let-the-cuts-happen approach on the sequester seems risky — especially with President Barack Obama blaming Republicans for everything from kids not getting vaccines to long lines at the airport — the alternative for Boehner is worse. Jump-start negotiations with Obama, and he would be slammed for engaging in out-of-sight, secret talks with a president his party doesn’t trust. Raise taxes, and Boehner’s courting trouble in his conference and endangering his speakership. Both are simply nonstarters.”
Boehner accused Obama yesterday of using the troops as “props.”
Members of Congress won’t have their pay affected by the sequester, but “Congress will feel the pain in other ways,” USA Today writes. “Members' office budgets, committee staff and leadership offices will all see the same across-the-board cuts as any other discretionary , non-defense spending. Other legislative branch functions — the Capitol Visitor Center, the Library of Congress's Books for the Blind program, even the Capitol Police — would take cuts of about 9%, according to a report from the Office of Management and Budget.”
Hey, you know it’s gotta be true, right? The NRA goes after Chuck Schumer in a new video, claiming that “universal background checks” really means “universal registration.”
House Majority Whip dubbed President Obama the “road-show president.”
Republican Walter Jones of North Carolina said Dick Cheney’s going to hell, the Huffington Post writes of a Jones speech: "Congress will not hold anyone to blame. Lyndon Johnson's probably rotting in hell right now because of the Vietnam War, and he probably needs to move over for Dick Cheney." (h/t Political Wire.)
“Filmmaker Phelim McAleer’s campaign against those warning about the dangers of fracking continues Tuesday on Capitol Hill,” Politico writes. “McAleer will screen his film ‘FrackNation’ at ‘an event for the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Subcommittee on Environment,’ according to an email from McAleer.
