Republican congressional leaders opened some room “for a longer-term deficit reduction agreement that eventually could blunt the effects of the $85 billion in automatic spending cuts now in place,” Roll Call reports.

The catch: GOP leaders “insisted that any revenue from a tax overhaul would have to be reserved for reducing tax rates and not used to fund government spending or lower the deficit.”

“The leaders appeared determined to keep the level of spending cuts in place but signaled that a longer-term deal to lower the deficit, overhaul the tax code and rein in spending on entitlement programs could still be had.”

Ezra Klein: “The bottom line on American budgetary politics right now is that Republicans won’t agree to further tax increases and so there’s no deal to be had. This is not a controversial perspective in D.C.: It’s what Hill Republicans have told me, it’s what the White House has told me, it what Hill Democrats have told me. The various camps disagree on whether Republicans are right to refuse a deal that includes further tax increases, but they all agree that that’s the key fact holding up a compromise to replace the sequester.”

“There’s no deal even if Obama agrees to major Republican demands on entitlements. There’s no deal because Republicans don’t want to make a deal that includes taxes, no matter what they get in return for it.”

Paul Krugman: Well, duh.

House Speaker John Boehner told NBC News there “is no easy way to stop the budget cuts — known as the ‘sequester’ – that began taking effect Friday night, and voiced uncertainty over how Washington can solve the overall fiscal problems that have consumed the nation’s politics for more than two years.”

Said Boehner: “I don’t think anyone quite understands how it gets resolved.”

The Cloakroom: By holding firm on the sequester, the GOP leaves President Obama with a very risky strategy.

The only thing President Obama can do now is wait, Politico reports.

“Obama’s decision Friday to remove the threat of a government shutdown in late March as a leverage point in the standoff means that the sequester will remain in place for weeks — if not months, or longer. He set into a motion a risky strategy that rests entirely on the slim chance that Republicans do an about-face on tax hikes after a public outcry.”

John Avlon: “It is a dangerous game. While polls show Americans more likely to blame Republicans for the obstructive gridlock than the president, if the economy turns south and chaos continues to reign supreme, ultimately people will blame the president. There are no doubt some conservative strategists counseling a hard-line betting on this outcome with an eye toward the 2014 and 2016 elections.”

CBS News reports the national debt increased by more than $6 trillion since President Obama took office.

During the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush, the debt grew by $4.9 trillion.