Why John Boehner Might Be Right To Blame Obama For The Sequester

It has been four days since sequestration officially went into effect, yet confusion lingers over who is to blame for Washington's failure to avert the $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts.

In a press conference Friday, President Barack Obama accused GOP leaders of refusing to come to the table to avoid the sequester, arguing that he cannot perform a "Jedi mind meld" to force House Republicans to agree to a deal on the budget cuts.

Meanwhile, Republican House Speaker John Boehner has laid the blame squarely on Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for failing to come up with a sequester plan "that can actually pass the Democratic-controlled Senate."

While conventional wisdom tends to side with Obama on this issue, it's worth noting that there is some truth behind Boehner's argument.

Despite the President's doomsday rhetoric, the White House has made little effort to reach a deal on the sequester. In the weeks leading up to Friday's deadline, the Obama administration virtually gave up on direct negotiations with Congress, focusing instead on a public relations campaign aimed at warning Americans about the potentially devastating consequences of the budget cuts.

In fact, Obama and Congressional leaders did not meet face-to-face about the sequester until Friday, the day that the cuts were scheduled to go into effect.

Negotiations also stalled in the Senate, where Republican aides have claimed that their Democratic counterparts made little effort to reach a deal in the two months following the year-end fiscal cliff agreement that pushed back the sequester deadline to March 1.

That is not to say that Democrats did not have their own plan to avoid the sequester, as Boehner claimed in an interview with "Meet The Press" Sunday.

Both the White House and Senate Democrats put forward proposals to replace the sequester through a combination of spending cuts and new revenues, obtained primarily by closing tax loopholes and capping deductions.

But Senate Democrats made few attempts to get Republican support for their bill, which was loaded with liberal priorities, including the Buffett Rule and an end to tax breaks for oil companies.

In what was widely seen as a show vote last week, the bill failed to win the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster. A Republican alternative, which would have given Obama more flexibility in administering the cuts, also failed.

"Democrats did not include Republicans in their gimmicky sequester bill," said Robert Steurer, a spokesperson for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. "It didn’t go through committee or any amendment process on the floor."

Democratic Senate aides counter that any attempt to revive talks would have been futile, given Republican opposition to new revenues. They correctly note that, since the fiscal cliff deal, Senate Republican leaders have categorically rejected any sequester deal that included additional tax revenues.

"They had no interest in any deal that included even a penny of new revenue," one Senate Democratic aide told Business Insider. "So while there were certainly conversations among members and dialogue, it’s very difficult to negotiate unless you have someone at the other side of the table who is willing to compromise as well."

While it is true that Senate GOP leaders have no political will for a compromise — both McConnell and his No. 2, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), are up for re-election in 2014 — other Republican Senators have indicated they may be open to a comprehensive deficit reduction package that includes some new revenue.

Now that the sequester deadline has passed, the President has begun to reach out to those rank-and-file Republican Senators, Obama's chief economic advisor Gene Sperling said on "Meet The Press" Sunday.

But this new outreach effort raises a key question about Obama's sequester warnings: If the cuts are really as devastating as he claims, why wait until after the deadline to reach out to lawmakers who are willing to compromise?

Democrats would argue that House Republicans were never going to accept a sequester deal that included new revenues. That may be true, but at least Obama would have been doing something to avoid the painful budget cuts that he spent so much time foreshadowing.