Fact: Republicans don't really like the sequester either. That's why they tried to blame it on Obama.
Sam Stein of Huffington Post:
As a group of top lawmakers looks to hammer out a relatively small-bore budget agreement by mid-December, it's becoming increasingly apparent that the main sticking point is how to relieve the pain of sequestration.
By now, we know the drill: In order to abide by the terms of the Budget Control Act of 2011, budget negotiators need to find new spending reductions or revenue increases to offset any sequestration rollback. The good news, Stein reports, is that Democrats will not agree to any deal that cuts Social Security or Medicare:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told The Huffington Post he would oppose such a deal, and one top Senate Democratic aide called it a "complete non-starter."
Instead, Democrats are entertaining the idea of cuts to lower-profile mandatory spending programs, like agricultural subsidies.
Republicans are unlikely to agree to such a deal, but according to Stein's report, it appears that Democrats recognize the weakness of the GOP position, which is that on the one hand, they want to preserve the spending cuts of the sequester in order to claim to their base that they've cut Federal spending, but on the other hand, they don't believe the sequester spending cuts are tenable.
As a result:
Democrats would love to construct a deal that only provides sequestration relief while leaving topics like mandatory spending and tax reform for a later date. Some aides suggested in interviews that they'd make just such a push.
That's essentially a fancy way of saying that the best way to end sequestration is to end sequestration, and it would be a terrific development if Democrats followed through on it, both by making that case to their Republican counterparts as well as to the public at large.
Everybody knows the sequester is stupid; continuing to hold its repeal hostage to some sort of bigger bargain—whether mini or grand—is an idiotic perpetuation of the government-by-crisis mentality that led to sequestration and ultimately the shutdown.
Given that context, the best way to nuke the sequester is to simply nuke the sequester. Obviously, there's no guarantee that Republicans would allow that to happen, but if Democrats are willing to start making the case that Republicans should allow it to happen, at the very least they'll have a rational position heading into the 2014 elections. And that's important, because odds are the only way we'll get rid of the sequester is by winning back control of the House.