“The fight between President Obama and congressional Republicans over the automatic spending cuts that start next week is shifting from one about stopping them to one about assigning blame if they happen,” the Washington Post reports.
“The escalating efforts are a reflection of how crucial the sequester has become in the long-running debate over the size and scope of the federal government. No matter how the idea came about, the $1.2 trillion in cuts to defense and domestic spending will nevertheless serve as a high-profile test of the deep reductions in federal spending that have been a hallmark of Republican economic thinking for years.”
Wall Street Journal: “Tuesday signaled that the next week or more of debate will be aimed
at scoring political points if the cuts take effect, even temporarily,
as now seems likely.”