Boehner to Senate: 'Get Off Your Ass'

John Boehner fired a sharply-worded salvo in the sequester blame game today, telling the Senate to "get off their ass" and pass a bill. "We have moved a bill in the House twice," Boehner told reporters. "We should not have to move a third bill before the Senate gets off their ass and begins to do something." Of course, the Hill points out that the bills to which Boehner is referring—which would shuffle budget cuts from defense to social programs—expired when the new Congress took over.

Meanwhile today:

• Ben Bernanke warned lawmakers that the cuts, if not averted, would be a significant "burden on the recovery," Politico reports. The Fed chairman suggested Congress spread the cuts out over a period of years, to avoid an immediate economic shock.
• Democrats are still demanding a replacement package that includes tax hikes; President Obama is in a Navy shipyard in Newport News today to, in the White House's words, "highlight the devastating impact the sequester will have on jobs," USA Today reports.
• Immigrations and Custom Enforcement is releasing "several hundred" detainees into "less costly" means of detention, reports CNN, a move it blames on the sequester cuts set for Friday.
• But America is largely unfazed by, or ignorant of, the looming cuts. A new Washington Post/Pew poll shows that only one in four Americans are following the sequester drama, and only one in five say they understand "very well" what would happen if the cuts do kick in.

(More sequester stories.)