"So I think that's different than it could be in some parts of the country, but we haven't seen any measurable effect here at all," he added.

A new poll from CBS News shows that 69 percent of Americans don't believe the sequester has impacted them. That may be because the cuts have been very specific and localized, and particularly affected low-income communities.

On the other hand, Congress did take urgent steps to rectify the part of sequestration that was being felt by wealthier people: FAA furloughs, which were causing flight delays.

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That’s better than the 2 percent growth last year and the slowdown at the end of the year. But it’s still cause for serious concern.

First, consumers won’t keep up the spending. Their savings rate fell sharply — from 4.7 percent in the last quarter of 2012 to 2.6 percent from January through March.

Add in March’s dismal employment report, the lowest percentage of working-age adults in jobs since 1979, and January’s hike in payroll taxes, and consumer spending will almost certainly drop.

Median household incomes continue to decline, adjusted for inflation. Another report out today showed consumer confidence fell in April.

Second, the recovery continues to be wildly lopsided. The only thing really keeping it going is the rip-roaring stock market. But the stock market only boosts the wealth of the richest 10 percent of Americans, who own 90 percent of stocks (including 401K retirement accounts).

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I am guessing that over the next few days a lot of Americans are going to hear about these delays, or be personally inconvenienced by them, and think to themselves, wait, the sequester thing is still happening? Well, yes, it is, because so far it hasn't been that bad, for certain Americans. Other Americans, though, have been aware of the cuts since they went into effect.

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The dire warnings that had issued from the White House beforehand – threatening that Social Security checks would be delayed, airport security checks would be clogged, and other federal facilities closed – seem to have been overblown.

Sure, March’s employment report was a big disappointment. But it’s hard to see any direct connection between those poor job numbers and the sequester. The government  has been shedding jobs for years. Most of the losses in March were from the Postal Service.

Take a closer look, though, and Americans are starting to feel the pain. They just don’t know it yet.

That’s because so much of what the government does affects the nation in local, decentralized ways. Federal funds find their way to community housing authorities, state unemployment offices, local school districts, private universities, and companies. So it’s hard for most Americans to know the sequester is responsible for the lost funding, lost jobs, or just plain inconvenience.

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This prompted President Obama to announce that he, too, would call attention to the widespread deprivation and needless immiseration Congress has foisted upon the nation by formally returning 5 percent of his salary to the Treasury as well. Five percent of his $400,000 annual salary. That he doesn't need because he's rich.

Rep. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat and Iraq War veteran, upped the stakes by announcing that she had already written a $1,218 check to the Treasury , representing a whopping 8.4 percent of one month of her congressional salary. Duckworth, I am pretty sure, is not nearly as rich as President Obama or Secretary Hagel, but on $174,000 a year, not counting tax deductible expenses, $1,218 shouldn't hurt too much (she says she'll do a check each month).

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For two years now the only sure thing standing in the way of an entitlement-cutting, not-so-grand bargain has been the intransigence of the far right House GOP caucus. So far, that’s been mostly a win for the president. He gets to say he’s for compromise, including “sensible” entitlement reductions, without ever having to make them. And his most fervent progressive devotees get to say he doesn’t really mean it, it’s just a bargaining stance, and since no deal is ever made, Obama outfoxed his opponents again. He’s the only adult in the room!

But the must-read part of Fournier’s piece isn’t the news that the House GOP is open to a deal, which is important, but his explanation of why:

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It's a “doomsday mechanism,” former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta declared. The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) – the leading advocacy group for Pentagon contractors – has also warned of the allegedly dire consequences of sequestration for their industry (which receives nearly $1 billion a day from the Pentagon), expressing “extreme disappointment that sequestration was not averted.”

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As Ryan Grim at HuffPo noted Tuesday, The Federal Bureau of Investigations told lawmakers in a recent letter that across-the-board cuts resulting from sequestration "will cause current financial crimes investigations to slow as workload is spread among a reduced workforce. In some instances, such delays could affect the timely interviews of witnesses and collection of evidence."

"Left unchecked, fraud and malfeasance in the financial, securities, and related industries could hurt the integrity of U.S. markets," wrote FBI Director Robert Mueller III.

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Recall that in 2011, California faced at the state level what the federal government faces at the national one. (With "trigger" mechanisms that made them even more sequester-like).

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“It kills me not to be there, not to be in the White House,” Romney lamented.

His wife, Ann, who sat next to him, agreed. “I’m like a she-lion when it comes to defending him,” she said. “And I mourn the fact that he's not there.” Of the defeat, she added: "We were a little blindsided."

Mitt acknowledged that he was surprised by the loss, but showed some real contrition. "I lost my election because of my campaign, not because of what anyone else did,” he said.

Ann, however, said she was “happy to blame the media.” The press’ bias “never let the American people see the real Mitt,” she explained.

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In her Wall Street Journal column today, which thankfully lacks any attempts to read John Boehner's “vibrations,” Noonan ruminates at length about whom the American people will blame for the pain the sequester will inflict:

Everyone has been wondering how the public will react when the sequester kicks in. The American people are in the position of hostages who'll have to decide who the hostage-taker is. People will get mad at either the president or the Republicans in Congress. That anger will force one side to rethink or back down. Or maybe the public will get mad at both. [...] If the sequester brings chaos and discomfort, it's certainly possible the Republicans will be blamed. But it's just as possible President Obama will be.

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Imagine further that the plotters infiltrate Congress and state governments, reshape their districts to give them disproportionate influence in Washington, and use the media to spread big lies about the government.

Finally, imagine they not only paralyze the government but are on the verge of dismantling pieces of it.

Far-fetched?  Perhaps. But take a look at what’s been happening in Washington and many state capitals since Tea Party fanatics gained effective control of the Republican Party, and you’d be forgiven if you see parallels.

Tea Party Republicans are crowing about the “sequestration” cuts beginning today (Friday). “This will be the first significant tea party victory in that we got what we set out to do in changing Washington,” says Rep. Tim Huelskamp (Kan.), a Tea Partier who was first elected in 2010.

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“Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying ‘Oh, by the way, I can’t do this because of some budget document?’” Woodward said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“Or George W. Bush saying, ‘You know, I’m not going to invade Iraq because I can’t get the aircraft carriers I need’ or even Bill Clinton saying, ‘You know, I’m not going to attack Saddam Hussein’s intelligence headquarters,’ as he did when Clinton was president because of some budget document?” Woodward added. “Under the Constitution, the president is commander-in-chief and employs the force. And so we now have the president going out because of this piece of paper and this agreement, I can’t do what I need to do to protect the country. That’s a kind of madness that I haven’t seen in a long time.”

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Then last week he kvetched that Obama was “moving the goalposts” by demanding that a deal to avert the $85 billion in budget cuts include some revenue. That’s baloney: The horrific sequester deal was always intended to force a more balanced approach to deficit-cutting.

Now he’s claiming the president alone has the power to avert disaster by ignoring the sequester, particularly its steep defense cuts, and doing … I don’t know what. But here’s what he said on Wednesday’s "Morning Joe":

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But of all the hundreds of government programs on the chopping block, one rose above the others to demand unique outrage from GOP leaders, as the Hill reports:

Republicans are condemning the Obama administration’s decision to release several hundred illegal immigrants from detention facilities because of possible funding cuts from the sequester.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) blasted the move and said he would be looking for more information. "This is very hard for me to believe that they can’t find cuts elsewhere in their agency," he said in an interview set to air Tuesday night on CBS. "I frankly think this is outrageous. And I’m looking for more facts, but I can’t believe that they can’t find the kind of savings they need out of that department short of letting criminals go free."

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Watch:

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Here are some of the key issues causing the great GOP schism:

1. Gay Marriage

A group of prominent former Republican officials argued this week that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, filing a brief in support of a Supreme Court challenge to Proposition 8, California's ban on gay marriage. But the flip side is another case before the Supreme Court, a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, which bans same-sex marriages for the purposes of receiving federal benefits. Since the Obama administration announced in February 2011 that it would no longer defend the law in court, House Republicans elected to continue on in its stead, and have spent $3 million taking up the reins.

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Both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will likely hold votes before Wednesday on the Democrat and Republican plans to prevent the sequester, respectively. But both measures are expected to fail.

From the Washington Post:

The Democratic plan would delay the sequester until January, replacing the across-the-board cuts with a mix of $110 billion worth of new tax revenue and more-narrowly tailored spending cuts. It includes $54 billion in revenue by ensuring that most millionaires pay at least 30 percent of their income to the Internal Revenue Service — something that prompted McConnell to dismiss it immediately as a tax that could not pass.

The GOP plan is still being crafted. Officials said Sunday it might include a provision that would leave the sequester in place but allow more flexibility for agency leaders in imposing the cuts.

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