Congress’s budgetary mess is “stoked by a group of players who operate within the Republican Party,” The Nation’s John Nichols says. “What we desperately need right now is, frankly, a Ronald Reagan or a Barry Goldwater or a William F. Buckley—somebody who will stand up to the irrational section of that party.” Nichols joins Hardball with Chris Matthews to forecast the showdown between the Obama administration and the Party of Boehner. 

—James Cersonsky

Who’s liable to be hit the hardest by so-called sequestration? Check out Greg Kaufmann’s “This Week in Poverty.”