We’re still in the posturing phase of the fiscal cliff situation, and now we have another data point. Harry Reid has come out and said pretty forcefully that he will not roll back the trigger, the automatic cuts to defense and discretionary spending due at the end of the year, without a “balanced” approach to replace them.

Perhaps showing concern about the softening economic forecasts of recent months, President Obama has provided a to-do list for Congress that would, in his words, “create jobs and help restore middle class security.” The to-do list includes several ideas from the American Jobs Act and subsequent legislation proposals announced in recent months, but there’s a curious omission.

McConnell, strangely enough, is the Senate Minority Leader but also sits on the Appropriations Committee. I guess he doesn’t want to stop the gravy train.

I think Republicans have real vulnerabilities in this fight, which will play out over several months. John Boehner has no room to maneuver. He clearly cannot pass a budget or even a continuing resolution with his preferred cuts. And if he gives in to the White House and passes something at the $1.047 trillion level, he’ll lose substantial amounts of Republicans to his right. So far in his tenure, Boehner has not secured a deal that would require large amounts of Democrats for passage. But that appears to be his only option short of a shutdown.

I’m reminded of that old liberal bumper sticker about how “it will be a great day when schools have all the money they need and the Pentagon has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.” In Miami County, Kansas, they had to hold the equivalent of a bake sale to make sure that low-income women received access to reproductive health services under Title X, after the all-malle county commission axed the funding.

With a Jewish holiday coming up tonight thoughts turn to what I should be neurotic about. Matt Yglesias says I should freak out about Europe, and he’s right. But that’s been the case for two years. And the powers that be over there are religiously opposed to the proper steps to take to end the crisis. In short, seen it! So what’s next?

Mark Zandi now predicts that the job market will come back at a much stronger clip than he previously expected, with the jobless rate under 8% by the end of 2012 and under 7% by the end of 2013. Zandi is the guy who predicted a bottom in housing prices in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. One of these days he may be right, and all of Washington will hail his analytical acumen.

The President attacked Paul Ryan’s radical budget at a speech for newspaper executives today. The Administration sees this speech on a continuum with the populist tone of last year’s speech in Osawatomie, Kansas. It attempts to keep faith with the middle class, and it will draw a contrast between this vision and the cruel vision of Paul Ryan’s America, a “you’re on your own” society that would attempt to sever the responsibility between government and its citizens. But the President may have a problem with the grand deal he tried to cut last year.

The House vote on the budget will not just include an up-or-down vote on the Paul Ryan version. As per custom, several budgets will get a vote that day, including proposals from the Republican Study Group, Progressive Caucus and House Democrats. But there’s another version out there, one from what I’ll term the Wanker Caucus, looking to just put Simpson-Bowles on the House floor. Enter the magic asterisk.

As long as the news media devotes massive amounts of space to a fantasy budget, why can’t they turn their attention for just a minute to a more legitimate one Like last year’s CPC budget, which earned praise from the likes of Jeffrey Sachs, Paul Krugman and even The Economist, the Budget for All makes up-front investments while reducing the deficit over time by making the tax code more progressive and scaling back on defense.