a bad negotiator you say?

White House Believes G.O.P. Will Bend as Cuts Take Hold

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s team concedes that the almost certain arrival of across-the-board budget cuts on Friday will not immediately produce the politically dramatic layoffs and airport delays that the administration has been warning about for days. 

But White House strategists say they believe that a constant drip-drip-drip of bad news will slowly emerge in Congressional districts across the country in the weeks ahead, generating negative headlines and — they hope — putting Republicans on the defensive for their refusal to raise taxes. 

Yet by accepting the inevitability of an extended Washington stalemate, the president is risking the possibility that Americans will eventually blame him — not members of Congress — for job losses, smaller paychecks, longer lines at airports, a reduction in government services and a less well-equipped military. 

He could also ultimately emerge as a kind of president-who-cried-wolf if Americans just shrug at the slow-rolling budget cuts and think the crisis atmosphere that Mr. Obama created was more hype than reality. On Tuesday, the president began admitting that the impact of the cuts “won’t be felt overnight.” 

Even so, he has aggressively used the White House political machinery to ratchet up public anxiety about the budget cuts, called sequestration. The goal, officials said, is to prepare Americans for layoffs, shrinking benefits and reduced services — and to ensure that Republicans get blamed. 

“It will be like a rolling ball,” Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, said this week, describing the impact of the budget cuts on her sprawling agency. “It will keep growing.” 

White House officials said on Wednesday that Mr. Obama had invited the Congressional leadership to a meeting on Friday, after the cuts have gone into effect — a stark indication that the administration does not expect any progress before then. 

The wait-it-out political strategy in the White House is different from the one Mr. Obama pursued in previous tax and spending standoffs with Republican lawmakers. In those clashes, the president urgently sought to reach last-minute deals with Republicans to avoid the dire fiscal and economic consequences of an impasse. 

Republicans are trying to make the case to the American public that the president and his staff are trying to frighten people by overstating how difficult it will be for government agencies to trim their spending. 

In an interview Tuesday evening, the House speaker, John A. Boehner, said the White House was trying to “play games with the American people, scare the American people,” adding, “This is not leadership.” 

Officially, White House officials say the president remains hopeful that something might happen in the next 48 hours to delay the automatic cuts, which he and the Republicans agreed to in the summer of 2011 as a way to prod agreement on how to cut the nation’s soaring deficit. 

In reality, there appear to be no attempts at last-minute negotiations. The president’s top aides said they expected Mr. Obama to have discussions with lawmakers this week, but they have repeatedly said that they do not have any planned meetings or phone calls to announce before Friday. 

“The president has been engaged and will continue to be engaged with Congressional leaders of both parties on the issue of the sequester,” Jay Carney, the president’s press secretary, told reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday. 

White House officials do not expect Mr. Boehner or Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, to suddenly agree to tax increases in the next two days. And the president has no intention of backing away from his demands for what he calls “balanced” deficit cutting that includes tax increases and spending cuts. 

As a result, the next several weeks could look very much like the present, with Mr. Obama flying to communities around the country to highlight the impact of the budget cuts. 

House Republicans, meanwhile, remain confident that their members will not give in to the president’s demands for tax increases no matter what happens after the cuts take effect. 

Strategists for Mr. Boehner believe that Republicans have been successful in branding the automatic cuts as Mr. Obama’s idea. For weeks, the speaker and others have pointed to news reports from 2011 suggesting that sequestration was initially proposed by the president’s top aides. 

Top Republicans say that their members previously made concessions to Mr. Obama only when inaction would have automatically led to a payroll tax increase or an income tax increase on all Americans. This time, they say, their inaction will lead to spending cuts, something they say Americans support. 

Mr. McConnell said in a statement on Wednesday that the meeting with the president on Friday was a chance to affirm the Republican commitment to spending cuts. 

“With a $16.6 trillion national debt, and a promise to the American people to address it, one thing is perfectly clear: we will cut Washington spending,” Mr. McConnell said. “We can either secure those reductions more intelligently, or we can do it the president’s way with across-the board cuts. But one thing Americans simply will not accept is another tax increase to replace spending reductions we already agreed to.”

Republicans didn't care about the payroll tax increase, which happened anyway. Americans don't support spending cuts as the Republicans will find out. The Teabaggers miscalculated again just as they assumed the debt ceiling clown show was feasible until their leadership explained it to them.