Weekly Recap: Broken Hearts, Broken Budgets‏

Hi there,

It's Saturday! We interrupt your weekend activities to bring you the highlights from the past week:
1) President Obama delivered his State of the Union address. The annual presidential speech laid out Obama's plans for numerous new spending programs, which he claimed would not add "a single dime" to the deficit.
2) Bankrupting America rolled out a campaign to demand the president “Show Us Your Cuts” during his State of the Union address, which happened to fall on Mardi Gras. The campaign grabbed headlines, including a front-page write-up in the Washington Post.

3) Valentine's Day. The holiday broke both hearts and budgets on Thursday. Like an over-anxious date, Washington continued its big-spending ways instead of taking the more sensible romantic-dinner-at-home route.
4) The Washington Post took a look at ineffectual spending cuts. Flying in the face of Washington's claims that "we don't have a spending problem" and "we've had plenty of spending cuts," the Post found that many of the cuts in spending over the past few years were marginal with no meaningful impact.

5) Congress prepared to go on vacation. With the looming sequester and continued gridlock, Congress decided now was a great time to get out of town and take some R&R.
Send us your questions! Unsure about the budget, the sequester, or anything else going on in Washington? Ask our policy team! Tweet us your questions or post them on Facebook; we'll respond via short video clips on Vine, a new social network, next week.