Gleckman sees “the impending government shutdown scheduled for just a month from now” as much more important than the sequester:
If Congress can’t agree on a spending bill by the end of March, nearly all agencies will be shut down and all their employees laid off on April 1, making the sequester’s relatively modest furloughs irrelevant. On the other hand, if Congress and the president do agree on a budget for the rest of fiscal 2013, as they ultimately must, they are likely to make major changes to the sequester—adding money for some agencies, cutting for others, and very likely reducing the overall spending cuts entirely. Thus, many of those furloughs will never take place.
Stan Collendar expects that “members of Congress that today are saying they are absolutely adamant about letting the sequester stay in place will start to waiver as their constituents become increasingly unhappy about the impact of the spending cuts on their lives.” But he’s not sure we’ll see a repeat of 1995 and 1996:
There are three big difference from the two federal shutdowns that could affect this: (1) the number of safe congressional districts, (2) the tea party, and (3) John Boehner (R-OH) being a much weaker speaker than Newt Gingrich (R-GA). These changes mean both that House members may not care as much about overall approval ratings as they do about the approval of their base voters in their individual districts, and that their leadership may not be able to sell them on any deal even if it wants to make one. If that’s the case, the sequester could stay in place much longer than either of the two shutdowns did individually or cumulatively.
Ezra explains why no deal could be struck to avoid the sequester:
Republicans basically support the sequester because it’s all spending cuts, but they want the cuts allocated more intelligently. The White House opposes the sequester because it hits the economy too hard in 2013 and because it doesn’t include tax increases, and so they want it replaced with a compromise proposal. And so Republicans want to make the sequester a bit better and a lot more permanent while the White House opposes efforts to make the sequester better precisely because it would make it more permanent.
The Dish 