Is the president overplaying his hand regarding the sequester?

>> take that to the latest and looming sequester, president obama and congressional republicans haven't spoken directly since last week and yet to meet face to face reportedly this year. the president continues to push his plan for raising revenue while house speaker john boehner rules out the possibility of any new taxes.

>> i stand by those commitments to make the reforms for smart spending cuts. we also need republicans to adopt the same approach to tax reform that speaker boehner championed just two months ago.

>> the president says we have to have another tax increase in order to avoid the sequester. well, mr. president, you got your tax increase. it's time to cut spending here in washington. instead of using our military men and women as campaign props if the president was serious, he'd sit down with harry reid and begin to address our problems.

>> you know, willie, it strikes me not only the white house but liberals for a decade now have said if republicans were serious about the deficit, they would cut defense spending and they would come forward with tax increases. well, it looks like, as mike was talking about yesterday in this new york article, republicans are going to come forward and let these defense cuts go through. so republicans will, over the past three months compromise in defense spending and compromise in tax increases. so i think it's fair at this point to say, mr. president, show us your hand, because this is what we've been hearing for a decade. taxes have gone up and now we're going to cut pretty significantly from the pentagon's budget. your move, mr. president.

>> he wants revenues to go up again and john boehner 's response is, we just did that.

>> that's the thing. we always heard, you guys raise taxes, cut defense spending and then we will come back with a compromise on spending cuts. but, no, we raise taxes, we come forward with pentagon cuts and the president comes back with, we want to tax more americans. let's raise taxes again.

>> you wonder where this ends now then, right, because if the president's not going to go anywhere without more revenue, where does this take us? we have the plan in place that was supposed to do both of those things. we're at that point on friday and we will hit it and neither side is going to get to it. what's the end game here.

>> how do you think this is goin going?

>> it's going terribly.

>> republicans always lose these budget battles. i get a sense for the first time the president is overplaying his hand. talking about fear and loathing , locusts ascending from the heavens, now talking about more tax cuts , your dog will be forced to eat dandy lions in the backya backyard.

>> you know the list they released, state by state by state, aimed at having people thinking that the world is going to come to an end on saturday so get the trash taken out before then, why didn't they release that four weeks ago? did these numbers just occur to them over the weekend?

>> i didn't think they thought republicans would be so difficult to noergt with yet again?

>> why did they tiptoe up to the edge of the sequester.

>> good question.

>> both sides have tiptoed up to the edge of the sequester. the white house is being criticized for doing exactly what you say they should have done earlier, the so-called scare tactics and fear mongering .

>> john boehner is speaker of the house . wh what's president obama 's title, president of the united states , not the democrats, not harry reid , his base is the country.

>> what do you want him to do?

>> let's lead a little.

>> i read that in the paper. let's lead a little. speaker boehner can't speak for his own caucus and there's no compromise.

>> who has the bigger microphone? who has the bigger megaphone and larger presence on the national stage.

>> that's why you see the president out with the military and criticized by the president.

>> you're a leader,you've led your entire life, can we just not admit here at the table the president hasn't shown the type of leadership he should on all these issues.

>> i think there are things the president should have done differently. we talked about them endlessly around the table. on defense the other side is particularly divided. we just had a whole discussion about cpac and what's a true conservative and all the rest of the stuff. you have to have compromise.

>> i can separate the talk radio types from john boehner .

>> i'm not sure.

>> i can separate. let's look again at the big picture . let's look at this from 30,000 feet. we've always said the grand bargain. said this for years when republicans give up on taxes, compromise on taxes and compromise on defense spending . check, check.

>> no. no. no. no.

>> oh, my gosh.

>> they have not done that actually.

>> if sequester goes through, there are going to be massive cuts in defense spending .

>> yes.

>> in return the president compromises on spending and entitlement programs .

>> yes. but the compromise on taxes everybody holds up on a great compromise on taxes was half a compromise on taxes. the republicans agreed to $650 billion of revenue over 10 years at out of $4 trillion of cuts, 15% of the total. that really isn't a compromise. boehner was ready to give more than that last december.

>> in that deal, republicans came halfway to the compromise.

>> halfway to the compromise.

>> how far did the president go towards the come mines the last deal.

>> the last deal was just about taxes.

>> correct. he didn't do anything.

>> the previous two bills were all about spending.

>> you have magical charts.

>> i have magical charts that will show you this.

>> i'm sure they are.

>> we will do the charts a little later.

>> it's fantastic. i think this whole deal steve has with the nation to come up with the charts for him to come here and put them on the air is great.

>> my charts are balanced.

>> i need something explained to me. we had a republican on who was great and said, i'll close loopholes and 40 seconds later, this president is going to force us to raise taxes. acting like that was a big negative. isn't the president asking to close loopholes here?

>> give us something for it.

>> what's wrong with that? why are we acting so insulted?

>> give us something for it.

>> he's offered about $900 billion in cuts. take it, take it.

>> this is not complicated. this is not complicated. all you need are to have a balanced package of taxes. another 6$600 billion or so of taxes and in return for that you need significant reforms in entitlement programs .

>> exactly. that's not complicated except you have a president who will not do that. we now have him to where he's talking about modest reforms in medicare , which is great so when i have stage 4 cancer i hope my doctor looks at me and says we will take a modest approach to this. you need to take some vitamin c .

>> this is a negotiations, right? this is a negotiation and you have john boehner standing up there saying, read my lips , no new taxes. how do you have a negotiation? if i was john boehner , i would say no way we will give him another dime of taxes even though i agree to close loopholes --

>> even though -- it's about who goes first?

>> we have already gone first. we raised taxes and we republicans have done the two big things on the items. i want the president to tell me how he's going to reform.

>> cut spending by 1$1.7 trillion.

>> that is nonsense. you guys talking generalities.

>> i will leave you two guys to oning th work this out. glad to not be in it this time.

>> katty kay , how about you give the conservative bbc give us your take?

>> one caution from a conservative country at the moment where we had tax cuts and conservative programs we are now facing the process of a triple dip recession in britain and lost our triple credit a rating.

>> that's a bad day .

>> and could have hung on to and put a lot of store by. where recovery is fragile and global markets are watch iing inextricably closely what america and american politicians are failing to do, you have to be careful how much spending cuts you have. you said it countless times the long term issue is spending cuts to health care and short term issues, you have to be careful. steve is right, there have been huge cuts to discretionary spending under president obama some we have seen in decades.

>> i love that, my favorite words.

>> cuts to discretionary spending .

>> that is funny, you raise spending by 100% and you cut it by 5% and that's big spending cuts. katty again --

>> you were talking about the negotiation process.

>> when talking about medicare , not about cutting education or transportation or anything like david cameron did now, i'm talking instead, other than defense, i'm talking about the long run, we need to focus on the long run so we don't make the same mistakes as the united kingdom . there's two sides of this, too, you talk about the spending cuts are bad? what about raising taxes while the economy is upside down? keynesians are supposed to be against that, too.

>> we had a big debate in this country about that, whether you can raise taxes on the wealthiest and will it affect growth that much. i'm sure steve has the list of economists out there that says you can raise taxes on people over a million, give them a 30% mandatory tax rate earning over a million and wouldn't affect growth very much because of the kinds of things they're investing in. at the moment on the tax raises and how you do them, there's a debate. on spending cuts, you're dead right, you have to address medicare and that's the big one. you're right again, the president is not coming forward. there have been discretionary spending cuts.

>> let's bring these tax increases to the real world . for me, i don't run a small finally, i get a paycheck across my desk every two weeks. that's fantastic. raising taxes will not affect me. but i tell you what, i know a lot of small business owners who are carrying -- have to make payroll every two weeks.

>> are you talking about what the president wants now?

>> i'm talking about raising taxes among anybody right now is going to dampen economic input and economists, college professors, journalists that say it will not just haven't lived in the real world .

>> i agree with you. the expiration of the 2% payroll tax cut at the end of the year had a material effect. you saw walmart and burger king . i don't really care if we raise taxes now or later but tax increases have to be part of this 10 year package.

>> i agree, just like medicare cuts.

>> i agree.

>> we have to be so careful about what we do, the economy is upside down. the fourth quarter we were in the negative. have to be careful now and we've got to plan ten years ahead.

>> you agree.

>> still ahead the 90th anniversary of the world.

>> by the way, my twitter says this, why i love hat steve rattner.

>> people come up to me on the streets and say, ask rattner. what's rattner like?

>> when i walked down 9th avenue in 1964 going to the warrick --

>> now is the anniversary of the trade center bombing. we will talk to police commissioner ray kelly and one of the statest that could be hard e hardest hit by the sequester cuts, senator tim kaine and robert gibbs and eugene robinson . first, bill karin.

>> i have myself a rattner crush, too. didn't think you needed to know that but i do. we are getting nailed again. two storms in about two weeks. the last one we had last week dumped about a foot. this will do the same. interstate 75 coming out of the worst of it. chicago, a lot of rain out of the ohio valley . you're not alone. getting a soaking rain out of the deep south . we had a tornado at the bottom of your screen. still, a tornado watch coming out of gainesville. all that green on the map, that's a soaking rain out of south carolina and north carolina . eventually, that will come up to washington d.c. , an umbrella day. the nation's capitol north ward . it's primarily to the great lakes, bring your umbrella late today about 6:00 p.m ., west coast , you look fine, we're looking pretty nice in texas. wichita, one of the snowiest months you've ever seen. snow is just ending and picked up another 6-10 last night. " morning joe " brewed by