The Thursday Morning Jolt examines the reports, and repercussions, of claims of chemical weapons being used in Syria, and then this development, closer to home:

Liberals Are Starting to Wonder if They Won’t Win the Sequester Fight After All

Sure, congressional Republicans have a long and distinguished history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And nobody should speak too soon; we’re only 21 days into the national Fallout 3 Simulation that is called the sequester.

But for now, there are some signs that the GOP actually handed the sequester right.

You’ll recall last week I wrote:

Nobody wants a government shutdown; thus it is extremely unlikely that you’ll see one. The GOP is winning the sequestration debate, or at least they think they’re winning the sequestration debate, because the public hasn’t really noticed the cuts. Certainly the markets don’t mind.; A government shutdown would be noticed and for Republicans, they would come across as not merely anti-waste but anti-government and a government shutdown would probably also be bad news for Obama.

Apparently both parties got the memo:

The U.S. Senate today passed legislation to avoid a partial government shutdown, in a rare example of bipartisan cooperation on federal spending. The chamber voted 73-26 to forward on to the House a measure that would keep agencies’ lights on through Sept. 30, the end of the 2013 fiscal year. Republicans there probably will clear it for President Barack Obama’s signature. Legislation currently funding the executive branch expires March 27, and without action by Congress, agencies would begin running out of money.

Now let me offer part of a column from Greg Sargent of the Washington Post, who is usually the last guy to declare that the Democrats are in trouble, and that the Republicans have played any cards right:

Maybe I’m wrong about this. But it’s looking more and more like progressives and liberals are going to be facing a tough question: Which is worse, indefinite sequestration or a grand bargain that includes serious entitlement cuts? Seems to me that sooner or later, major players on the left are going to have to stake out a position on this question.

With Republicans seemingly refusing to yield on new revenues, it’s looking increasingly as if they are going to stick with sequestration and gamble that they can ride out the politics until sequestration-level spending becomes the “new normal.” Brian Beutler has a gloomy take on why this is looking likely. Obama, of course, will continue to push for a “grand bargain” that trades entitlement cuts for new revenues, on the theory that the bite of the sequester really is going to be felt over time — the Huffington Post details that job losses really are starting to happen — which could force at least some Republicans back to the table.

It’s unclear to me which of those two endgames is going to happen. But one thing that appears very unlikely is the preferred progressive endgame: As the sequester grows increasingly unpopular, Obama and Dems rally public opinion to force Republicans to replace it with a deal that combines new revenues with judicious spending cuts that don’t hit entitlement benefits. I’m just not seeing any way this happens.

That means that at some point, liberals may well be faced with a choice — should they accept the grand bargain that includes Chained CPI and Medicare cuts, and join the push for that, or essentially declare the sequester a less awful alternative, and instead insist that we live with that?

If you need a moment to go, “mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,” please take one.

Now maybe within a month or so, the public’s view will change, they’ll hate the sequester with a roaring passion, and endorse tax increases to avoid the continued pain of this 2 percent cut. Or maybe you’ll hear more of an uproar about the potential expense of the Air Force’s fantasy football league.

Hey, remember President Obama’s big rallying cry at the State of the Union, that all the various “common sense reforms” on gun control deserved a vote?

Today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that her assault weapons ban would not be included in the legislation brought to the floor of the Senate.

Apparently, it didn’t deserve a vote after all!

By the way, all of that chanting at the State of the Union… did everyone know they were chanting at Harry Reid?

And will the usual liberal columnists and talking heads who support gun control lash Reid now? Or will some hold their fire because he’s a Democrat?

And what will Sen. Chris Murphy, Connecticut Democrat, say in response? Last month, he said:

MURPHY: I think we will get a vote and I think we’ll get a vote because Newtown changed everything in this country. There were a lot of people wearing ribbons on the floor of the House of Representatives last night, and they were Republicans and Democrats. The NRA said yesterday they were going to wait for the “Newtown effect” or the “Connecticut effect” to dissipate before they went back to lobbying to weaken gun laws. Well, it’s not going to dissipate. The fact is that this nation has been transformed. I think the president was right to say, listen, republicans can’t hide from this. They need to call a vote on the floor of the Senate and House and tell the American public what side they are on. If Republicans want to be the party of assault weapons, of high-capacity magazine clips, they are on the wrong side of the American public and the wrong side of history.

“Newtown changed everything in this country.” No, not really.

According to Recovery.gov, “Of the $804 billion awarded as of June 30, 2012, more than $2 billion appropriated by Congress expired — meaning the appropriations were not awarded or used within specified time frames. Agencies might also have adjusted an award amount with funds being returned to the agency. The expired funds are kept on an agency’s books for five years to cover invoices for the projects; at the end of the five years, the funds are returned to the Treasury.”

Why are they kept on the agency’s books for five years? It has been nearly four. If they haven’t spent that money on “shovel-ready” projects by now, how likely are they to spend it in the coming year? What, are they waiting for an invitation from one of the sequester-spared White House calligraphers?

Any chance we can get at those $2 billion to mitigate some of the sequester cuts that the public finds more irritating?

After all, it takes less than a million to cover the costs of White House tours. Certainly, we could take some of that $2 billion and use it to make sure the White House Easter Egg roll isn’t canceled.

By the way, the worst offender was the Department of Agriculture, with $764 million left unspent as of June 30. The Department of Energy left $241 million in stimulus funds unspent; the Department of Defense left $241 million, and the Department of Transportation spent $220 million.

If the Easter Egg roll is canceled, will the announcement be sent out by the White House calligraphers?

There is a long tradition of presidents expressing concern about high federal spending… and then, once in office, raising that spending dramatically.

A long tradition:

Of course, government spending went up considerably under FDR. In 1932, when he uttered that quote, federal spending was 7.27 percent of Gross Domestic Product. By the end of 1933, it was 9.05 percent; it bounced between 9 and 11 percent until World War Two, when it burst to nearly 22 percent in 1942 and hit nearly 48 percent in 1945. (Tanks, planes, and the A-bomb were expensive.) But the government spending in proportion to the rest of the country’s economy shrank rapidly after the war, down to 13.23 percent by 1948.

U.S. federal government spending is 23.8 percent of the gross national product today. It was below 20 percent as recently as 2007.

But even FDR, perhaps the most passionate, popular, and persuasive advocate of higher federal spending in U.S. history, had to at least appear to be concerned about the amount of spending under President Herbert Hoover, and pretend that he found it excessive.

Today, President Obama boards Air Force One and flies to Argonne National Laboratory in suburban Lemont, Illinois, to deliver a speech on weaning the nation from oil and gas.

If the flight to Chicago takes about one hour, and another hour to return, the operation of Air Force One will cost taxpayers $359,500 today. That’s enough to restore about 20 weeks of public tours of the White House.

The Chicago Sun-Times notes, “Obama was last in Chicago on Feb. 15 for a speech at the Hyde Park Academy.”

“On the road again . . . Just can’t wait to get on the road again . . .”

UPDATE: Also note that the president will be flying about 620 miles between Washington and Chicago. While the precise rate of fuel consumption of Air Force One is not revealed to the public, a 747 burns about five gallons of fuel per mile. So President Obama will burn about 6,200 gallons of jet fuel in his round trip, to deliver a speech urging “new research and technology to shift our cars and trucks off oil for good.”

At the conference I’m going to today, one of the topics of discussion will be whether Obamacare will be altered in the coming Congress.

My first instinct is that any reform of Obamacare is unlikely to pass, because the major factions in Washington have completely different priorities. Most Republicans would like to stop it in its tracks, repeal it entirely or almost entirely, and replace it with free-market-oriented reforms and tort reform and so on. As Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said yesterday:

I am proud that Senate Republicans stood united today and voted unanimously to defund Obamacare. While I’m disappointed that the amendment did not pass, we will not give up. And today’s vote demonstrates that the fight to repeal Obamacare is far from over.

There are some Democrats who want to delay or repeal parts of Obamacare, such as the new tax on medical devices. Senator Al Franken (D., Minn.) calls it a “job-killing tax.” But there are probably very few Republicans who are eager to save congressional Democrats from the consequences of their actions. You passed it, guys, now you explain the consequences to your displeased constituents.

Of course, unifying Democrats behind a series of reforms to Obamacare will present its own challenges. There are quite a few who would prefer that any changes to Obamacare bring it closer to single-payer. Last year, all 75 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said they would push for a single-payer system if the Supreme Court struck down Obamacare.

And of course, President Obama would want changes to the bill to be minimal or little-noticed, as each change represents a concession that he and his allies didn’t get it right the first time.

(“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”)

So my conclusion is that it would take some sort of really catastrophic consequence to get all the factions in Washington united on changing Obamacare as is.

Enter a really catastrophic consequence, stage left:

Some Americans could see their insurance bills double next year as the health care overhaul law expands coverage to millions of people. The nation’s big health insurers say they expect premiums — or the cost for insurance coverage — to rise between 20 and 100 percent for millions of people due to changes that will occur when key provisions of the Affordable Care Act roll out in January.

A giant increase in the cost of health insurance, driven by the “Affordable Care Act,” might drive a national fury that will make the 2009 and 2010 Tea Party rallies look like . . . well, actual tea parties with little finger sandwiches and cloth napkins.

From the midweek edition of the Morning Jolt:

Obama: We Don’t Want a Balanced Budget Just for the Sake of Balance

When it comes to chasing a balanced budget, President Obama is not exactly Inspector Javert (or Samuel Gerard, depending on your pop-culture frame of reference). But he admitted Tuesday he was never really trying that hard:

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, President Obama rejected calls to balance the federal budget in the next ten years and instead argued that his primary economic concern was not balancing the budget, but rather growing the economy.

“My goal is not to chase a balanced budget just for the sake of balance. My goal is how do we grow the economy, put people back to work, and if we do that we are going to be bringing in more revenue,” he said.

“We noticed,” the guys at Weasel Zippers quip.

In the broadest sense, Obama is right: A country with the economic resources and general stability that the United States has enjoyed through much of its history can afford to run a deficit. Wiser minds than me argue that the real measuring stick is the debt-to-GDP ratio.

Our debt is . . . $16,703,943,129,416.14, as of Monday. That’s $16.7 trillion.

Our nominal GDP is $15.6 trillion. Oof.

Looking at the inflation-adjusted numbers for our annual deficit, year by year . . . you know what used to be considered “a lot”? $500 billion, in 2004. (That year, unadjusted for inflation, it came in at $413 billion.) Back in 1991, it came in at $453 billion. So a half a trillion was the pre-Obama all-time high.

Now look at the Obama era: $1.5 Trillion in 2009, $1.36 trillion in 2010, $1.32 trillion in 2011, $1.1 trillion in 2012. We’re supposed to be really happy that this year it might come in under a trillion, in the $900 billion range.

In other words, the best Obama has done is twice as bad as it’s ever been.

No, we don’t need a perfectly balanced budget — which is one of the reasons I’m pretty “meh” on the notion of a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution. But we’ve got to get the annual deficit something closer to “only” a couple hundred billion each year.

Anyway, if you were hoping for a grand bargain, rest assured that congressional Democrats will be every bit as helpful on entitlement reform as we’ve come to expect:

Some liberals challenged Obama on his frequently repeated call to include entitlement savings in any grand bargain. Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, reiterated his opposition to adopting a less generous cost-of-living formula to calculate Social Security benefits.

“We were cautioning him about that: Be careful about this grand bargain,” said Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa. But, he told reporters, Obama informed them “that’s something that’s still open for negotiation.”

Obama did not promise the caucus that he would oppose raising the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare, an issue Harkin brought up during the meeting. “He didn’t make a commitment,” said Harkin, “but he seemed to indicate that yes, there are other ways of solving the entitlement problem without doing things like that.”

Notice this cute line in the Washington Post’s short write-up: “Obama plans to release his own budget plan in April, two months after the president is required to announce his budget priorities to Congress.”

“BOOM,” says the latest McClatchy-Marist poll:

If President Barack Obama had piled up political capital with his impressive re-election, it’s largely gone.

His approval rating has dropped to the lowest level in more than a year, with more voters now turning thumbs down on his performance than thumbs up, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll. The measure of how much people like him also has dropped.

He’s still vastly more popular than Congress, particularly congressional Republicans. But in the biggest political clash of the year — over the federal budget and how to curb deficits — voters split 44 percent to 42 percent between preferring Congress or Obama.

The numbers: 45 percent of voters approve of the way he’s handling his job, 48 percent disapprove. Steven Thomma of McClatchy puts those numbers in context:

That was down from a 50 percent approval rating in November and December, and the lowest since November 2011. It also was the first time that more people disapproved of his work than approved since November 2011, when his rating was 43-50. Obama’s personal popularity also has declined, with 48 percent of voters having favorable impressions of him and 48 percent having unfavorable impressions. That was down from 53-44 in December. It also was the lowest since November 2011, when it was 47-49.

“Man, that guy is falling fast!” said Icarus.

The article also notes:

At least some of the president’s fall to Earth lies in the fact that voters no longer see him in the context of an election. He has to stand alone in the eyes of voters again and doesn’t benefit from the comparison with Republican rival Mitt Romney.

In light of that, we should expect the White House to seek out a new stand-in for Romney, some Republican who they can demonize and use as a contrast. Speaker John Boehner and House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan seem like the most likely targets.

Bummer.

The final Morning Jolt of the week offers a look at what Republicans can learn from Rand Paul, the comedic horror that is our half-baked “Dudes” idea, and then this reflection of a troubled economy:

Understaffed America

One of the first victims of the Great Recession was service. I don’t know about you, but with disturbing regularity I get seated in restaurants . . . and we sit there . . . waiting for someone to greet us, bring menus, ask if we want anything to drink . . . and we’re left waiting for a seemingly interminable time. It’s as if our waiter suddenly retired. Or, you know, it’s like we’re in Europe.

Peggy Noonan is noticing the same thing.

It’s not a debt and deficit crisis, it’s a jobs crisis. The debt and the deficit are part of it, part of the general fear that we’re on a long slide and can’t turn it around. The federal tax code is part of it — it’s a drag on everything, a killer of the spirit of guts and endeavor. Federal regulations are part of it. The administration’s inability to see the stunning and historic gift of the energy revolution is part of it.

But it’s a jobs crisis that’s the central thing. And you see it everywhere you look.

I’m in Pittsburgh, making my way to the airport hotel. The people movers are broken and we pull our bags along the dingy carpet. There’s an increasing sense in America now that the facades are intact but the machinery inside is broken.

The hotel has entrances on two floors. I search for the lobby, find it. Travelers are milling about, but there’s no information desk, no doorman, no bellman or concierge, just two harried-looking workers at a front desk on the second level. The man who checked me in put his phones on hold when I asked for someone to accompany me upstairs . . .

Things are getting pretty bare-bones in America. Doormen, security, bellmen, people working the floor — that’s maybe a dozen jobs that should have been filled, at one little hotel on one day in one town. Everyone’s keeping costs down, not hiring.

What that hotel looked like is America without its muscle, its efficiency, its old confidence.

There are a lot of reasons for this . . . but we’ve added one more reason for a company to try to hobble along with fewer workers than they normally would:

Under ObamaCare, employers with 50 or more full-time workers must provide health insurance for all their workers, paying at least 65% of the cost of a family policy or 85% of the cost of an individual plan. Moreover, the insurance must meet the federal government’s requirements in terms of what benefits are included, meaning that many businesses that offer insurance to their workers today will have to change to new, more expensive plans.

ObamaCare’s rules make expansion expensive, particularly for the 500,000 US businesses that have fewer than 100 employees.

Suppose that a firm with 49 employees does not provide health benefits. Hiring one more worker will trigger the mandate. The company would now have to provide insurance coverage to all 50 workers or pay a tax penalty.

. . . Under the circumstances, how likely is the company to hire that 50th worker? Or, if a company already has 50 workers, isn’t the company likely to lay off one employee? Or cut hours and make some employees part time, thus getting under the 50 employee cap? Indeed, a study by Mercer found that 18% of companies were likely to do exactly that. It’s worth noting that in France, another country where numerous government regulations kick in at 50 workers, there are 1,500 companies with 48 employees and 1,600 with 49 employees, but just 660 with 50 and only 500 with 51.

If service industries cut the staff any deeper, it’s going to start looking like the sets of The Walking Dead in this country.

I think this ABC News report from Jonathan Karl, on the White House declaring it can no longer give public tours because of sequester cuts, did not go as the president and his allies would hope:

Diane Sawyer: “People have been e-mailing us, asking, ‘Really? Is that the only way to cut the budget?’”

Jonathan Karl does the math and concludes that ending the tours saves $18,000 per week, out of about a $1.6 billion Secret Service budget. (Does a uniformed Secret Service agent really cost only $30 per hour? Strikes me as a bargain!) The cost of the tours annually, then, is $936,000.

That’s just under the cost of a 2010 state dinner given at the White House for the president of Mexico.

Karl notes that Obama took a 20-car motorcade to travel the six blocks to last night’s restaurant meal.

The Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt features a contrast in government tours, helpful words from a critical reader, and then the big news of the day . . .

Rand Paul Goes to Washington

Rand Paul added a lot of big fans Wednesday.

A day that was supposed to be just another Washington snow day brought us something we haven’t seen in a long time: an honest-to-goodness, in-keeping-with-the-Constitution, old-fashioned filibuster, all over a basic, fundamental concept central to our founding: the power of the central government is limited, and the government’s authority to exercise lethal force must be particularly and specifically limited.

Actual headline in USA Today: “Rand Paul ends epic filibuster over Brennan”

He started speaking around 11:45 a.m. Wednesday morning. He finally ceded the floor at about 12:40 a.m. local time on Thursday.

Andrew Johnson & Nathaniel Botwinick give you the highlights of Rand Paul’s crusade:

Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) took to the Senate floor today to filibuster President Obama’s nominee for CIA director, John Brennan, as well as to challenge the administration’s policy on drones. Paul began speaking at approximately 11:47 a.m. . . .

Paul said he would be happy to end it if he had reassurance from the Obama administration that drone-strikes would not be used on noncombatants. After Reid left the floor, senators Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and John Cornyn of Texas joined in the effort.

Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) took to the floor of the Senate this afternoon in support of Senator Paul. He thanked the senator for “defending the institution” of the Senate and its “constitutional obligation to ask relevant questions of public policy and get answers” through his filibuster.

The filibuster became a bipartisan effort when Oregon’s Democratic senator Ron Wyden joined Paul on the floor in its fourth hour. Wyden called for reining in the executive branch’s “serious, far-reaching” drone-strike program, saying that the targeted killings “should not be allowed . . . without any scrutiny.”

Three hours into Paul’s filibuster, fellow Republican senator Ted Cruz of Texas joined the Kentucky senator on the floor. Cruz praised Paul for his leadership on the issue of drones and the rights of American citizens, calling him a “modern Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” who is “surely making Jimmy Stewart smile.” Along with Cruz, senators Mike Lee of Utah and Jerry Moran of Kansas joined Paul on the floor at roughly the same time.

John Podhoretz: “Attention everybody in Washington: This is how you make yourself a star.”

Writing at Breitbart, the Ace of Spades declared it genuinely exciting:

I have the same feeling of receding cynicism I did when the Tea Party first exploded on to the scene and began doing things that just weren’t done in America anymore — taking politics seriously, taking the Founders’ legacy to us seriously, showing up at Town Halls to ask their once and future representatives some real questions, engaging, questioning, insisting, demanding.

There was a time 200 years ago when this was commonplace. Americans had just won their liberty and were enthused about it. They treated their civic duty not as a mere duty but as the highest aspiration of political man.

This filibuster excites me for the same reasons — a return to the Old Ways, the ways that actually work, the way American politics is actually supposed to be conducted, with Senators offering thoughtful defenses of their positions and, above all, insisting that this nation is We the People not We the Ministers & Lesser Bureaucratic Warlords of Whatever Current Government the Public Has Had the Folly to Install in Office.

Jon Henke: “Kinda shocking that it takes a filibuster to get back the right not to be killed by our own government without a trial.”

Dana Loesch: “The left just exposed their hypocrisy on waterboarding by supporting drone killing without due process.”

Meanwhile, Ted Cruz generated his own fireworks, getting Eric Holder to appear to concur that the drone policy, as currently stated, runs afoul of the Constitution.

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice sent shockwaves through the nation when Attorney General Eric Holder informed Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in writing that the White House would be within its legal authority to execute an American citizen via drone on U.S. soil if that person was determined to pose a threat to national security. On Wednesday, testifying before a Senate panel, Holder was prodded repeatedly about this assertion by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Holder eventually admitted that it would not be constitutional to execute an American citizen without due process.

“In your legal judgment, does the Constitution allow a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil to be killed by a drone?” Cruz asked Holder pointedly.

“For sitting in a café and having a cup of coffee?” Holder replied. Cruz clarified that his hypothetical individual subject to a drone strike did not pose an “imminent and immediate threat of death and bodily harm,” but that person is suspected to be a terrorist.

“I would not think that that would be an appropriate use of any kind of lethal force,” Holder replied.

“With all respect, Gen. Holder, my question wasn’t about appropriateness or prosecutorial discretion. It was a simple legal question,” Cruz clarified.

“This is a hypothetical, but I would not think, that in that situation, the use of a drone or lethal force would not be appropriate,” Holder replied.

“I have to tell you I find it remarkable that in that hypothetical, which is deliberately very simple, you are not able to give a simple, one-word answer: no,” Cruz added. He said he think that his scenario would constitute a “deprivation of life without due process.”

. . . When Cruz was about to abandon his line of questioning after a number of equivocations from Holder, the attorney general clarified that he was saying “no” such actions would not be constitutional.

Our Charlie Cooke: “I’m very disappointed. Rand Paul has been speaking about foundational American values for hours but he hasn’t yet mentioned contraception.”

The White House’s efforts to relieve the pain of the sequester continue:

Obama will dine with some one dozen Senate Republicans on Wednesday night at a downtown Washington hotel, the White House announced.

The White House did not provide a guest list for tonight’s dinner, which is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at the Jefferson Hotel unless bad weather forces a postponement.

The Jefferson Hotel features three places to eat; however, one is only open for breakfast and lunch and another is a lounge/cocktail bar.

At the restaurant, “Plume”, they offer a “Prix Fixe Menu,” which starts at $85. The sample tasting menu is $110; it costs $195 with the “Classic Wine Experience,” $275 with the “Premium Wine Experience.”

For a mere $1,776 you can enjoy, “The 1776 Food and Wine Experience.”

BOOM:

A Reuters/Ipsos online poll released on Wednesday showed 43 percent of people approve of Obama’s handling of his job, down 7 percentage points from February 19.

Most of that steep drop came in the week to February 26 when it was becoming clear that Washington was going to be unable to put aside partisan differences and agree to halt automatic budget cuts which started last Friday.

DOUBLE BOOM:

Thirty-eight percent of Americans believe all the political actors involved — Republican and Democratic members of Congress along with Obama — deserve most of the blame for the cuts.

Twenty-seven percent think Republicans in Congress are responsible, 17 percent blamed Obama and 6 percent thought Democrats were to blame. Nearly half of independent voters, 49 percent, said both sides deserve the blame.

Every president generates a bit of “buyer’s remorse” from the electorate in his second term. Perhaps Obama’s is hitting early . . .

I don’t know if President Obama is losing the messaging battle over the sequester, but so far, he isn’t winning.

A new survey of adults from CBS News this morning: “38 percent of Americans place more blame on the Republicans in Congress, while 33 percent blame President Obama and the Democrats in Congress more for the difficulty in reaching agreement on spending cuts by the deadline.” Among independents, 33 percent blame Republicans, 31 percent blame Obama.

They find that “53 percent say they personally will be affected by the cuts in the sequester,” and run the headline, “Most feel sequester will personally affect them,” but that’s still 39 percent who said they didn’t think it would affect them, and another 7 percent who aren’t sure.

You’re seeing more writers express a conventional wisdom that the president has botched this:

Josh Kraushaar:

The headlines from the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, released Wednesday, seemed like good news for the president, but there are plenty of warning signs embedded within the survey. President’s Obama’s job-approval rating dropped 3 points overall since last December, to 50 percent, and his economic job approval is a mediocre 44 percent, down 5 points in the past two months. Despite the GOP’s deep unpopularity, Democrats hold only a statistically insignificant 2-point edge, 32 percent to 30 percent, over which party was best able to handle the economy. Republicans hold a 16-point edge on which party is best-equipped to control spending, even higher than their pre-2010 midterm standing.

Most notably, on the sequester, the White House held only a narrow advantage when respondents were presented the arguments for and against it. A bare 50 percent majority agreed with the president’s argument that the cuts “are too severe,” while 46 percent argued it is “time for dramatic measures.” Asked what Congress should do, 53 percent supported either keeping the cuts or implementing more significant spending cuts, with 37 percent backing a plan with fewer cuts. It’s hardly the sign of a presidential mandate on the subject, and a reminder that there is widespread concern over spending and the federal debt.

The White House’s strategy to exaggerate the immediate impact of the cuts has backfired, at least to some degree. The Washington Post reported that Education Secretary Arne Duncan falsely claimed that public school teachers were already receiving pink slips. The Pew Research Center this week found that only 30 percent of voters thought the spending cuts would have an impact on their personal finances — much lower than the 43 percent who believed the fiscal cliff posed a danger on that front.

Over at CQ Roll Call:

Republican aides said the GOP has maneuvered the president into a corner. Aides believe the sequester will affect Democratic constituencies more deeply than Republicans’, and by adding defense-related bills into the continuing resolution, they feel they can pacify their own hawks longer than Congressional Democrats can keep in line their members who cherish social programs.

“It’s going to be more comfortable for us than it is for them,” a House GOP leadership aide predicted.

Indeed, another senior Senate Democratic aide acknowledged that it will be hard for Democrats to keep holding the line against GOP efforts to give the president flexibility on how to implement the sequester.

Republicans also believe that they are bearing dividends of the “Williamsburg Accord,” in which Republicans agreed to push off the debt ceiling, and noted they will move a CR well in advance of a shutdown.

“Without a catastrophic news-friendly deadline . . . pressure builds slowly rather than a sudden cataclysmic event, which makes the president’s bully pulpit less effective,” the House aide said.

All this has Republican leaders thinking it is just a matter of time before Democrats come to them, hat in hand, acceding to a sequester deal without tax increases.

I like the simplicity of John Podhoretz’s theory: President Obama is getting more blame than he expected for the sequester . . . because he is there.

Maybe it’s as simple as this: The GOP is at a low point in its popularity historically, and Congress (whose lower House the GOP controls) is even more unpopular. Republicans are already being blamed for everything. So if something requires new blame, that blame has nowhere to go but in Obama’s direction.

The first Morning Jolt . . . after the sequester:

Under Sequester, the Morning Jolt Will Be Less Than 2 Percent Shorter Than Before

Shortly after midnight, this is what happened, according to Twitter:

Stephen Gutowski: “Just tried driving but since sequestration went into effect the roads have all crumbled into dust.”

Brendan Loy: “OH MY GOD THERE ARE GOVERNMENT WORKERS SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUSTING ALL OVER THE PLACE, THIS IS HORRIBLE, PLEASE MAKE IT STOP” He added, “BREAKING: CALIFORNIA DECLARES WAR ON OREGON; KENTUCKY LAUNCHES SNEAK ATTACK ON TENNESSEE. MASS CHAOS.”

Jonah: “It wasn’t until I ate my neighbor’s pancreas that I realized president Obama was right about the sequester.”

Iowahawk: “The corpses are piling up outside my window like cordwood, oh my God the humanity.”

Sebastian: “Nothing to worry about! I grabbed my double barrel shotgun & blasted #sequester through the door, just like the VP said.”

Ari Fleischer: “President Obama is right. Undo the sequester! I can’t stand it already.”

Becket Adams: “I don’t think my neighbors are taking sequestration seriously. They’re giving me weird looks and making fun of my war paint and loincloth.”

Exurban Jon: “So this is what anarchy feels like. . . . From now on, I shall be known as ‘ExJon, Warlord of the Western Deserts.’”

Buck Sexton: “Did America lose 170,000,000 jobs in the last 10 minutes? Keep me informed, everyone.”

Brandon Morse: “The #sequester may now join the Mayan Calendar and the Y2K bug in the ‘[Stuff] Everyone Survived’ Hall of Fame.”

By morning, it was even worse:

Rick Wilson: “A few hours of fitful sleep, the sound of sirens and screams of the victims of the Barackolypse rending the night air . . . I saw their fires in the dark, savagery swiftly tearing away the thin veneer of civilization only government diversity programs provided.”

John Podhoretz: “Just looked out the window. Five hedge fund guys fighting over a piece of raw meat.”

So what’s actually going to happen? Nothing much, at first:

For one thing, Obama must sign an order formally starting the “sequester” or spending reductions — which according to a new estimate from the Congressional Budget Office — would amount to $42 billion in the current fiscal year.

And White House aides have indicated that the president is not likely to put pen to paper on that order until after he meets with congressional leaders, a meeting slated for Friday morning.

Once Obama signs the order to start the spending cuts, any furloughs of federal workers could not begin at least for another 30 days due to federal regulations and to collective bargaining agreements which the government has with the unions that represent roughly half of the federal workforce.

So the Border Patrol Agents in Arizona won’t suddenly vanish on Friday and the civilians who repair Navy ships won’t be ordered to immediately put down their tools.

As with many things the federal government does, there are multiple rules, regulatory hurdles, avenues for appeal and opportunities for litigation.

As Under Secretary of Defense Robert Hale, the Pentagon’s Chief Financial Officer, explained last week, “The bottom line is, furloughs would not actually start for DOD employees until late April.”

He explained, “There’s a whole series of notifications. We started the first one today (Feb. 20), with the notification to Congress, along with a message by the secretary of defense to our civilian employees. That starts a 45-day clock ticking. Until that clock has run out, we cannot proceed with furloughs.”

He added, “At some point in mid-March, we will send a notification to each employee who may be furloughed. That starts a 30-day clock, waiting period, before we can take any action. And then later on in April, we will send a decision to employees, and they have a one-week period, once we’ve made that decision, to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board.”  

Hmm. Did the administration botch its messaging on the sequester as badly as it appears at this hour? Is this the first bit of post–Election Day hubris biting the president?

Below, an AP photo of the sun rising moments ago on the nation’s capital, devastated by sequester . . .

Hey, what was the White House saying when President Obama signed the sequester deal?

Fact Sheet: Bipartisan Debt Deal: A Win for the Economy and Budget Discipline

The Deal Includes An Automatic Sequester to Ensure That At Least $1.2 Trillion in Deficit Reduction Is Achieved By 2013 Beyond the Discretionary Caps: The deal includes an automatic sequester on certain spending programs to ensure that—between the Committee and the trigger—we at least put in place an additional $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction by 2013. 

Consistent With Past Practice, Sequester Would Be Divided Equally Between Defense and Non-Defense Programs and Exempt Social Security, Medicaid, and Low-Income Programs: Consistent with the bipartisan precedents established in the 1980s and 1990s, the sequester would be divided equally between defense and non-defense program, and it would exempt Social Security, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, programs for low-income families, and civilian and military retirement. Likewise, any cuts to Medicare would be capped and limited to the provider side.

Sequester Would Provide a Strong Incentive for Both Sides to Come to the Table:  If the fiscal committee took no action, the deal would automatically add nearly $500 billion in defense cuts on top of cuts already made, and, at the same time, it would cut critical programs like infrastructure or education.  That outcome would be unacceptable to many Republicans and Democrats alike – creating pressure for a bipartisan agreement without requiring the threat of a default with unthinkable consequences for our economy.

Now, they call those cuts “unacceptable,” but the sequester did meet President Obama’s top priorities – exempting Social Security, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, programs for low-income families, and civilian and military retirement. You only get so many top priorities. If you want to defend some areas of the budget from any cuts – you know, $85 billion out of a $3.8 trillion in a year with a projected deficit of $901 billion – you have to make some cuts in other areas. Cuts that range between 2 percent for Medicare and 10 percent for mandatory defense spending.

The sequester was a bet by the leadership of both parties in July 2011. Speaker  Boehner bet that the next time he had to deal with the sequestration cuts, he would be working with President Romney; President Obama bet that the next time he had to deal with the sequestration cuts, he would be working with Speaker Pelosi. They both lost.

The Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt features Arne Duncan getting caught lying, what the Right should expect from Chris Christie, and then these dramatic developments:

Will the White House Regret Telling Woodward & Others They’ll Regret Public Disagreement?

This will be a story worth watching: The White House vs. Bob Woodward. I’ll let David Jackson of USA Today summarize:

It’s Bob Woodward versus the White House.

The bestselling author and Washington Post reporter is protesting White House pushback over his criticism of how President Obama and aides are handling the sequester issue.

“It was said very clearly, you will regret doing this,” Woodward told CNN, citing an e-mail he received from “a senior person” at the White House.

“I mean, it makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House telling reporters, you’re going to regret doing something that you believe in,” Woodward said.

In a statement, the White House said that “of course no threat was intended. As Mr. Woodward noted, the email from the aide was sent to apologize for voices being raised in their previous conversation. The note suggested that Mr. Woodward would regret the observation he made regarding the sequester because that observation was inaccurate, nothing more. And Mr. Woodward responded to this aide’s email in a friendly manner.”

All we can say is: We know more than a few reporters have received similar e-mails from White House officials. Yelling has also been known to happen.

“More than a few reporters have received similar e-mails from White House officials.” So Obama staffers regularly tell reporters “they’ll regret” writing stories detrimental to the president, and we’re only hearing of this now?

Apparently the Easiest Government Program to Cut: Jailing Illegal Immigrants

Well, dang:

The Associated Press has learned that the Homeland Security Department official in charge of the agency’s immigration enforcement and removal operations has resigned after hundreds of illegal immigrants were released from jails because of government spending cuts.

In an email obtained Wednesday by the AP, Gary Mead told coworkers that he was leaving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the end of April. Mead is the head of enforcement and removal operations at ICE.

Mead had told co-workers of his resignation in the email sent Tuesday, hours after U.S. officials had confirmed that a few hundred illegal immigrants facing deportation had been released from immigration jails due to budget cuts.

For what it’s worth, an ICE spokesperson is insisting this is perfectly normal; he “announced several weeks ago to ICE senior leadership that he planned to retire after 40 years.” Uh-huh.

Permit me to quote the suddenly not-linkable Allahpundit of… SeveralDegreesAboveWarmAir.com:

So, even though releasing the detainees very conveniently served Obama’s goal of increasing the pants-wetting over sequester cuts while also very conveniently making the amnesty fans in his base happy, this was just Gary Mead going rogue without any direction from the White House. And Obama’s so mad about it that Mead has to clear out his desk immediately two months from now. Let me gently suggest that in the unlikely event Mead really did order this on his own, perhaps he was just acting in the spirit of his boss, who not so subtly suggested a few days ago that if a deal wasn’t reached on cuts ASAP then border security might have to go bye-bye for awhile.

Dana Perino isn’t buying this story, either: “Strains credulity to think that ice releases thousands of illegals and no one there ran it up the food chain. Not even a ‘heads up’? Hmmm.”

In case you had missed it, the very first place the federal government has decided to save money was the $164 per day it spends on jailing illegal immigrants. Our government’s priorities in action, my fellow citizens!

 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have released “several hundred” immigrants from deportation centers across the country, saying the move is an effort to cut costs ahead of budget cuts due to hit later this week.  Announcing the news Tuesday, ICE officials said that the immigrants were released under supervision and continue to face deportation. After reviewing hundreds of cases, those released were considered low-risk and “noncriminal,” officials said. The releases took place over the last week and were an effort “to ensure detention levels stay within ICE’s current budget,” said ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christiansen, citing uncertainty caused by a budget standoff in Washington. “All of these individuals remain in removal proceedings. Priority for detention remains on serious criminal offenders and other individuals who pose a significant threat to public safety,” she said.

Of course, you may have noticed… sequestration hasn’t taken effect yet.  Apparently government policies have prequels now.

If you’re calling ‘horsepuckey’ – or, you know, some other variation of that term – on this decision, you’re not alone:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said she’s appalled to hear that the Department of Homeland Security has begun releasing hundreds of illegal immigrants from custody.

It’s the first of potentially thousands of immigrants to soon be freed before mandatory federal budget cuts go into effect.

The Obama administration has been issuing dire warnings about the impact of the sequestration.

Brewer is a Republican. She calls the releases granted before Friday’s deadline for sequestration cuts “pure political posturing.”

Brewer says “this represents a return to exactly the kind of catch-and-release procedures that have long made a mockery of our country’s immigration system.”

‘Hey, don’t look at us, we just work here,’ insists the White House.

The White House said Wednesday that it played no part in the decision to release hundreds of undocumented immigrants from detention centers, but a Texas Republican congressman is demanding answers.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said the decision was made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement “without any input from the White House.”

He said ICE made the decision “as a result of fiscal uncertainty” over automatic spending cuts that are to take effect March 1 if Congress and President Obama do not reach a deal on a federal budget. Obama wants to raise taxes on the wealthy as part of the deal; Republicans are opposed.

On Wednesday, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul sent a letter to ICE Director John Morton demanding the total number of people released, where they were released from and the specific reason why each of them was deemed releasable.

“This decision reflects the lack of resource prioritization within the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is indicative of the department’s weak stance on national security,” McCaul wrote in his letter.

Hey, look at the bright side, we’ve just cut spending by at least $16,400!

From the midweek edition of the Morning Jolt:

You Can’t Community-Organize Your Way Out of a Sequester

You’re familiar with the notion of the Hedgehog and the Fox, right? “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”?

Hardball producer Michael LaRossa marvels, “Only in America can a President propose a law, get it passed, and then actively campaign against implementing it.” Yes, instead of spending time in Washington, with all of the members of Congress who could pass something to replace the sequester, Obama went to Newport News to hold a campaign-style event shouting about the need to pass something to replace the sequester.

Permit me to spotlight a funny recent essay by Red State contributor Moe Lane, where he examines the skills and philosophy of President Obama through the lens of role-playing games:

To begin with: a munchkin (or power gamer, or mini-maxer, or a bunch of terms that cannot be repeated here) is a type of gamer (roleplaying, computer, roleplaying-computer) who looks for loopholes in the rules – because games have rules, and there isn’t a rule-set in the world that cannot be manipulated by somebody with enough motivation/obsession.  And it turns out that the American Democratic primary system was full of such loopholes, which is why Barack Obama won the nomination in 2008 despite losing almost all the big Democratic primary states (and arguably the popular vote, depending on how you score Michigan).  And it also turns out that the intersection of our electoral system with our rapidly-expanding online culture can produce what computer gamers call “exploits:” which is to say, a glitch in the system that gives someone an unintended benefit (if it just crashes the system, it’s a bug).  Strictly speaking, the system is not designed to elevate a state Senator to the Presidency in five years – for what turned out to be very good reasons – but it can be done.

Mini-maxing is when a player designs a character that is fantastically good at one thing, at the expense of everything else.  So you could end up with a character who is, say, obscenely good at hitting things with a sword – but can’t convince a bunch of sailors to drink free beer.  The mini-maxer doesn’t mind; he’ll just go around the game trying to resolve as many problems as he can by hitting them with a sword (tabletop gamers – err, “D&D players” – often call this The Gun is My Skill List, although obviously substitute a sword for a gun in the name).  The problems that the mini-maxer can’t resolve that way he’ll either ignore until later, or else flail about on the screen while hitting the buttons quickly and/or at random (“button-mashing”), in the hopes that eventually the laws of probability will allow him to bull on through anyway.

And that’s where we are now.  Barack Obama knows how to do one thing: elect Barack Obama to public office.  And that’s not ‘elect Democrats.’  Or ‘elect liberals.’  Or even ‘elect people that Barack Obama likes.’  It’s just him: his team is trying pretty hard right now to figure out how to use their over-specialized skill more generally, but they don’t have much time to figure it out and the system is actually rigged against them in this case.  Barack Obama certainly doesn’t know how to govern effectively; take away a Congress that will rubber-stamp the Democratic agenda and he flails about.  He’s so bad at this, in fact, that when confronted with a situation where all he had to do was do nothing to fulfill a campaign promise (the tax cuts) we somehow ended up with a situation where Obama gave in on 98% of those tax cuts and voluntarily signed up to take the blame for the AMT fix.  In short: Obama was woefully unprepared for the Presidency, and he hasn’t really spent the last four years trying to catch up.  Instead, he goes from situation to situation either trying to recast the problem in ways that he does have some skill in (permanent campaigning for office), or else… flail about on the scene while hitting people’s buttons quickly and/or at random, in the hopes that eventually the laws of probability will allow him to bull on through anyway.

How did Obama try to pass his stimulus? Campaign-style events. How did Obama try to pass Obamacare? Campaign-style events. How is Obama pushing for amnesty legislation? Campaign-style events. How is Obama pushing for gun control? Campaign-style events. Fiscal cliff? Campaign-style events. This is all separate from his actual presidential campaign.

But mind you, his campaign-style rallies didn’t move the poll numbers on Obamacare, and Democrats to this day never use the word “stimulus” when discussing new spending. Obama is very good at getting people to like him and believe in him – more than for his agenda. We see this phenomenon when his overall job approval rating is 5-10 points higher than his handling of most major issues like the economy.

But this is what he knows, and with his reelection, he’s convinced it works. So here we go. More cowbell.

He’s got a fever.

President Obama heads off to Newport News today, to stand in front of a shipbuilding facility and once again argue that within a couple of days the economy will collapse and the government will cease being able to meet basic duties… unless we eliminate some tax deductions on the rich, because it’s been nearly two months since we’ve raised taxes on the rich.

Mr. President, let’s take a look at how the Pentagon has chosen to spend money recently, expenditures that have left them with no cushion for the cuts for sequestration. Senator Tom Coburn is kind enough to keep an eye on these sorts of things.

For example, the Office of Naval Research’s  Foreign Comparative Testing (FCT) program has spent more than $1.5 million to develop a new kind of beef jerky. Really.

With $21,000 from the Pentagon, the 100-Year Starship  organization hosted a September symposium for interstellar discussion.  “Former Trekkies Levar Burton and Nichelle Nichols made special appearances. The latter headlined an ‘intergalactic gala celebration.’ Attendees needed to wear ‘starship cocktail attire.’”

Yes, while I’m sure the ideas discussed at the convention were fascinating, your tax dollars basically sponsored a Star Trek convention.

Outside of the Coburn report, we can find that the Pentagon is spending $17,000 for every drip pan used on a Black Hawk helicopter:

Thanks to a powerful Kentucky congressman who has steered tens of millions of federal dollars to his district, the Army has bought about $6.5 million worth of the “leakproof” drip pans in the last three years to catch transmission fluid on Black Hawk helicopters. And it might want more from the Kentucky company that makes the pans, even though a similar pan from another company costs a small fraction of the price: about $2,500.

Our friends at Citizens Against Government Waste point out that the fiscal 2012 appropriations for the Defense Department includes $239 million for cancer research, including studies on breast cancer, $5.1 million for autism research,  and $3.2 million for bone marrow failure disease research. Research for cures for diseases is a wonderful thing, but one wonders why the Department of Defense is funding it, because the Labor/HHS appropriations bill already set aside $5.1 billion for the National Cancer Institute, $69.1 million for research on autism and $23.4 million for research on bone marrow disease .

Finally, about the shipbuilding itself, Coburn’s staff finds that the Navy is contracting to two different two different companies to build their new Littoral Combat Ships. Now, wiser defense minds than me may argue that there is a national security benefit to having two different companies building two different kinds of ships designed for the same mission, with “unique weapons systems and internal components and will require separate crew training, construction oversight, parts, and maintenance infrastructure throughout the life of the ships.” Perhaps our foes may find out a vulnerability in one that they won’t find in the other. But this approach has a cost, which is roughly $148 million more than building the same ship with one contractor for the four ships under construction. If the U.S. government purchases all 20, the cost will run up to $740 million.

But remember, if sequestration takes effect, the Department of Defense will have absolutely no choice but to have 800,000 civilian employees working only four days a week and to delay the deployment of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman. Really, it’s the only options they have, there’s no other place in the budget they could cut spending.

So, just to clarify, Obama will travel to Newport News, Virginia tomorrow to decry the spending cuts required by the sequestration that he signed into law.

He will presumably take Air Force One, which costs roughly $180,000 per hour to operate, to give a speech. That speech will make the same argument he made last week at the White House, with at least one first responder feeling like a “potted plant” behind him.

Oh, and President Obama has not met any congressional leaders face-to-face to discuss avoiding sequestration yet.

President Obama really, really, really wants to avoid sequestration, he tells us… yet he refuses to do what would be required to avoid it: make some concessions and hash out a better deal with congressional leaders.