Obama and Boehner have not spoken since Thursday. Where's the urgency on sequester?

It’s seems like we’ve been here before.

It’s midweek in Washington, a budget deadline looms on Friday that’s sure to cause some measure of havoc around the country and both sides are busy posturing in front of inanimate or human props.


But this fight is different from other fights: There is no urgency to solve it.

No all-night bargaining sessions that have leaders whipping votes over boxes of freshly delivered pizza. No eleventh-hour breakthrough in closed rooms in the Capitol basement.

President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner haven’t spoken since Thursday. Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid haven’t met since Jan. 21.

( Also on POLITICO: Boehner draws a line in the sequester sand)

But on Tuesday, Obama summoned Boehner, Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to a Friday meeting at the White House. It’s the same day that the sequester will take effect, though, so it’s not going to stop the cuts from happening.

The across-the-board spending cuts — known as the sequester — that Obama said wouldn’t happen and Boehner had promised his members he and Senate leadership would work to sidestep — in fact, will take hold.

Instead of inching closer together in these closing days, the sides are moving farther apart. Obama went to Newport News, Va., Tuesday and called for slashing tax loopholes to offset the cuts. Boehner gave a speech to the Credit Union National Association and said, “Yes, we should close loopholes, but we should do it as part of tax reform that lowers rates and helps create jobs.”

( WATCH: Obama blasts Congress on sequestration)

In short, they are nowhere.

The Senate will try to pass a bill to increase taxes on high-income earners this week. If it gets past the Senate and the likely 60-vote threshold, it still won’t pass the House. Boehner said his chamber shouldn’t have to pass its sequester replacement bill again before the Senate “gets off their ass” and passes a bill.

The real problem: Neither bill would pass the other chamber.

And get this: The House will leave town on Friday — just as the cuts take hold.

Here’s the rub: Republicans really have no idea what to think. They’re tangled in a mix of messaging about Obama crafting the sequester, the cuts being damaging but also seeking praise for having the courage to finally slash spending by at least 2 percent.

( PHOTOS: What they’re saying about sequestration)

Boehner and his team think they’re in a good position: Obama is calling for tax increases to blunt damaging cuts to the Pentagon, while Boehner is standing for cutting spending.

The same week in which bipartisanship seems so out of reach, Boehner is voicing support for the heftiest two-party undertaking: tax reform. He even designated the leadership’s most prized bill title — H.R. 1 — to rewriting the Tax Code.

“Dave Camp, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, is continuing a thoughtful and thorough review of the Tax Code with an eye on tax reform, and I fully support his work,” Boehner said at the CUNA convention, according to prepared remarks. “It’s time we shift the balance of power from the tax collector to the taxpayer.”

Not everyone is comfortable with the party’s position — namely, Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.). He said Washington is “kind of past” the point of negotiating.

“I can tell you, probably nobody is in good shape,” McKeon said, as he entered a party meeting Tuesday morning in which party fundraising was discussed. “But at the end of the day, there’s only one person that is elected by everybody in the country, and that’s the commander in chief, the president. I think he may be reading this wrong. In my district — because I’ve been talking about this for a year and a half — people pretty well understand what’s going to happen, and they’re not happy with him.”

Asked whether Republicans have done enough, McKeon said, “I can’t talk about everybody, I think I’m OK.”

Some Republicans are quietly questioning their leadership’s strategy: Why would they accept the sequester if they were going to turn around and blame Obama for it?

“I don’t know what else the choice was,” said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), a member of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee. “You remember how that debt ceiling crescendo went. It was hard to find anything. I think everybody on our side knows it’s the president’s idea.”

Those who voted against the bill that set up the sequester — the Budget Control Act — are having their I-told-you-so moment. “Everything that’s happened is exactly what I’ve expected to happen,” said Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), whom Boehner personally — but unsuccessfully — whipped on that bill.

“I disagreed with his calculation,” Fleming said. “I felt Democrats would be happy to cut defense and as a result, that they would set out to do exactly what they did, and that is destroy the process and never come to an agreement.”

Now, days out, the focus is turning toward giving some flexibility to the Pentagon to shuffle money among accounts so it can have more flexibility in spending the pared-back money it has. That could face resistance in both the House and Senate.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), whose Oversight and Government Reform Committee oversees the federal bureaucracy, said the Obama administration should “figure out how to cut 2½ percent out of the budget on selected programs.”

He suggested that rolling back Transportation Security Administration agents “slightly in order not to have to roll back one air traffic controller is a trade-off that this administration should have analyzed and hasn’t.”

Issa, who has been known as one of the administration’s staunchest critics, said that if Obama sent a list of tweaks in the government to Capitol Hill to avoid painful cuts, he “would personally drop every one of those bills under my signature.”