Obama adopts reassuring tone towards budget problems

>> gets ready for what may be the first significant snowstorm in two years, the snowquester, bread and milk buying and worrying, as only washington can, d.c. digging out from eat storm, the sequester. the president attend down the warnings again, adopting more of a reassuring tone.

>> we are going to manage it as best we can to try to minimize the impacts on american families. this will slow our growth. it will mean lower employment in the united states than otherwise would have been, but we can manage through it.

>> meanwhile, there was still cleanup going on from the campaign stage. arne duncan said he may have misspoke when he said teachers were already losing jobs.

>> when i said pink slips , that was probably the wrong word. you should have use job elimination. i should have been clear there. secondly, when i said impact on teachers, you should have said impact on educators.

>> this morning in a new cbs poll, 53% surveyed say they will personally be affected by the cuts. 18% said they want to see cuts, but 63 said they want to see the cuts without the sequester. only 13% want no cuts at all. when it comes to the political fallout of the all this, more americans would blame republicans in congress, 38%. but there's plenty of blame to go around, 33% would blame the president and congressional democrats. so you see why the white house wanted too pull up stakes. keeping sequester funds in place but giving those agencies more flexibility to decide what programs that will seeth cuts. senate democrats may add other measures to try to cushion the blow of the cuts but neither side is looking for a real confrontation here. meanwhile, the white house is trying to move on to other fights. today, the fight may turn out to be about cia pick john brennan . the senate intelligence committee is scheduled to vote on his nomination today. senate majority reid said the vote will be a test of republicans' good will. but republicans, some of them, want more answers on the benghazi attack and they are threatening to put a hold on brennen's nomination as leverage.

>> john and i are hell-bent on making sure the american people understand this debacle called benghazi .

>> i've had questions for weeks now. i have some questions about torture.

>> i'm not going to vote on a new croix director until i find out what the croix did in benghazi .

>> yesterday they released a list of what they regard as unanswered questioned about benghazi . including democrats who believe the senate has not given congress enough information. after the president rolled out new budget, energy and epa picks, just five cabinet posts remain to be filled. secretaries of commerce, labor and transportation, top spot at the small business administration and the job of u.s. trade representative . most of that we expect to get filled up in the next week or two. if it's tuesday, you know my favorite expression, somebody's voting somewhere. today that somewhere is in the country's second-largest city. los angeles is beginning the stages of picking a new mayor. accusations of corruption and record-breaking campaign spending with more than $19 million spent on ads, campaign mailers and consultants, the top two candidates are tied. councilman eric garcetti picked up 27%. wendy gruel was at 25%. third, radio host kevin james , the only true republican in race. along with scandal, this race also has a celebrity, because you know, it's l.a.

>> eric was always the idea guy. when we were 8 years old, he had a crazy idea to start a break dancing crew and to dance battle other dancing cruise around town. what we lived together later became the basis the hit move, break in two, electric bugaloo .

>> there's a measure that's on the ballot that would raise the sales tax to 9.5% to bring in $1 billion over the next five years to help close the city's shortfall. but it's unpopular. all the candidates for mayor came to oppose that ballot measure . they've spent money of their own, swapping accusations, the most bizarre being this video from the loan republican kevin james .

>> as mayor of los angeles , i get not only showing where we can find the money and showing where the bodies are buried. when wendy gruel says she knows where the bodies are buried, believe her because she and eric garcetti are the ones that buried them.

>> it is a detraction and a desperate attempt and i think is inappropriate.

>> the ad got plenty of attention. it drove james' negatives up to over 50% with a group that watched the ad. meanwhile, gruel, who could become the first woman to lead l.a. if she won, have been boosting unions. they've been airing ads like this one of garcetti singing at a convalescent home .

>> gruel has failed to audit the nwp salaries, and now the dwp is spending millions to attack me.

>> you can see these attacks are all over the place. n't other woman in the race, jan perry 's ability to manage the budget because she once filed for personal bankruptcy. they called the attacks outrageous and offensive to those of us fighting every day to help women fund financial security after divorces, knowing the issues are related to her ex-husband's law practice . first, how many people will vote? could be a low turnout. just 34% in '05. care to 44% in philly, 41% in san francisco . the second question, will we have to do it all over again? if no one gets more than 50% today, they advance to the one-on-one run-off on may 21st . polls open today and close at 11 pm eastern time . and by the way, the hispanic vote, there's no natural constituency. eric garcetti can claim some hispanic heritage. it's going to be fascinating to watch. this one's not over after tonight. by the end of former florida governor jeb bush 's tour, there isn't going to be anybody who has a doubt that he is serious about running for president in 2016 . he's reducing this book tour to raise his hand to wanting to become a major player in the republican party 's attempts to rebuild. he's not shying away from raw politics. when i sat down with him, he pulled no punches about the mistakes he believes mitt romney made in 2012 , specifically on the issue of immigration.

>> for a guy who is as talented as he is and who i think would have earnestly gone about the job of being president in a way that would have brought people together, i don't get it. it became clear that if you turn people off that are aspirational in nature because of your tone on immigration particularly, you're not going to win people's vote.

>> jeb bush had been critical of the tone mitt romney took on immigration. while he admits he's thinking about running for president in 2016 , he's also mindful of the difficulties of where the republican primaries are today. he watched both his brother and father slog through questions of real conservatives.

>> i remember you said i thought i was a conservative. i would not have been a conservative in that debate.

>> yeah, so the question is how do you win with purpose and meaning that allows you to have a chance to win in the general election ? and i think it's back to, i don't want to sound like a broken record , but i think it's to talk about positive things rather than just appealing to people's legitimate anger about the direction the country's in. you have to do more than that.

>> there's a lot of more that you will want to hear from jeb bush including explaining his immigration reform solution. he's backtracking from his own plan in his book. his surprising thoughts on the cuban american vote that went better for obama than a lot of people expected and what he thinks about florida governor rick scott 's decision on the healthcare law. plus his father, brother, his son, and more of his thoughts in a 2016 reason. that's all coming up later this hour in our deep dive at the bottom of the hour. but