John Boehner will announce in a fiscal summit put on by Pete Peterson’s outfit today that he is prepared to hold the debt limit hostage again at the earliest opportunity.

Over the weekend, California Governor Jerry Brown announced that the budget deficit for the next fiscal year has nearly doubled, from $9.2 billion to $16 billion. This almost assuredly means a commensurate increase in cuts to the state budget.

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.

The lingering question over Congress these days concerns the so-called “fiscal cliff,” that set of policies that expire at the end of the year, which are likely to be cleared up in an unaccountable lame duck session of Congress. The move now is to claim that this party or that party won’t leave these loose ends untied before the election, and that they’ll have the courage to act sooner. They won’t act, of course, they’ll just push out a legislative set unpalatable to the opposition.

Scott Walker on Monday claimed he saved Wisconsin taxpayers $1 billion, mainly through his union busting Act 10. But a careful look at this claim reveals Walker both exaggerated or invented the savings while balancing his budget on the backs of the poor, adding teachers and public servants to the unemployed, imposing a de facto tax on public employees, claiming credit for declining property values, and increasing fees while he claimed to be cutting taxes.

The White House is on a veto spree today. They threatened to veto the House’s new 90-day surface transportation extension because it includes a quick approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. Without an explicit veto threat, they “oppose” any version of a cybersecurity bill that violates user privacy. And they threatened to veto a not-so-small business tax cut bill expected out of the House this week.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Senate Republicans blocked consideration of the Buffett rule last night with a filibuster. The bill would have set a millionaire’s minimum effective tax rate at 30%, with a phase-in between $1 million and $2 million and an exemption for charitable donations. But Senate Republicans wouldn’t let it get onto the floor for debate.

Today, the Senate will vote on a motion to proceed to the Buffett rule, formally known as the Paying a Fair Share Act. A filibuster is expected, about 5:30 p.m. ET. This concludes a two-week push by Senate Democratic leaders and the Obama Administration on the bill, and the larger conversation around tax fairness and the need for the rich to pay a higher amount than those in the middle class.

With tomorrow, April 17, being tax day, Gallup is out with a new poll showing the country evenly divided about the amount of taxes they pay. Roughly half the country, 46%, thinks they play too much, and roughly half the country, 47%, thinks the amount they pay is about right. This may explain why Democrats and the White House are focused on the Buffett rule, not taxes in general.

I don’t have a huge problem with the Buffett rule, which will get a vote in the Senate and fail on Monday. But I do have a problem with the concept of a minimum tax based on adjusted gross income as a killer app in tax policy, rather than just raising rates and closing loopholes. To wit, high-income earners already have their tax avoidance strategies lined up.