text: H.R. 667, as this urgently needed legislation is known, would “redesignate the Dryden Flight Research Center as the Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center.” 
   
   You’d have to be on another planet to think that renaming NASA operations is Congress’s most pressing order of business this week. But for Republicans, using this moment to honor the first man to walk on the moon is not lunar lunacy. The naming proposal, sponsored by Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), was taken up at a time when House Republicans are pursuing a considered strategy of deliberate idleness. 
   
   After months of fretting over the harmful effects of sequestration, as the automatic cuts are called, House Republicans have belatedly embraced the realization that if they do nothing at all, they will be rewarded on Friday with a 2.5 percent cut in all federal spending without coughing up a single dollar in tax increases. They have learned to stop worrying and love the sequester. 
   
   President Obama is barnstorming the country, calling for tax increases and alternative spending cuts to replace the automatic ones. But while Republicans say they’d consider a different blend of reductions, they’d rather have the sequester than another deal like the one in December that raised taxes. 
   
   “The president says we have to have another tax increase in order to avoid the sequester,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said at a news conference Monday. “Well, Mr. President, you got your tax increase. It’s time to cut spending here in Washington.” 
   
   Boehner instructed Obama to “sit down with Harry Reid tonight and work with Senate Democrats.” As for House Republicans, they’ll be busy doing . . . well, not much. 
   
   Of the 56 days so far in 2013, the House has been in session for 20 — and a large chunk of those have been pro-forma sessions without votes, or with ceremonial bills. After a week’s recess, the chamber returned Monday with just a few items on the calendar. Lawmakers are scheduled to be out of town Friday, when the sequester is set to take effect. They’re planning another recess at the end of March, when the federal government is due to shut down for lack of funding. 
   
   The House started its day Monday at 2 p.m. Before leading the Pledge of Allegiance, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) requested a roll-call vote on approving the journal of proceedings from the last day in session — a time-wasting technique. 
   
   Next, Rep. Joe “You Lie” Wilson (R-S.C.) requested a minute of time to speak his mind, closing with his standard sign-off: “In conclusion, God bless our troops, and we’ll never forget September 11 and the global war on terror.” After Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) spoke about climate change, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Tex.) had something to say about “the president’s takeover of health care.” 
   
   Next, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) pleaded for the House to “abandon this reckless policy” of sequestration. Foxx, citing an op-ed by Bob Woodward in Sunday’s Washington Post, replied that the sequester “was the brainchild of the Obama administration” and that it is up to Democrats to replace it. 
   
   It was 2:10 p.m. — 10 minutes into the day’s proceedings — and the speaker called a three-hour recess. Finally, it was time for the NASA renaming. The task before the House: to put Armstrong’s name on the facility, relegating that of Hugh L. Dryden, a NASA engineer who died almost 50 years ago, to the facility’s test range. 
   
   The bill passed the House in the last Congress by a vote of 404 to 0 (the Senate didn’t take it up), so it could have cleared the chamber with a simple voice vote. But that would not have eaten up much time. And so McCarthy and five other lawmakers chewed up almost half an hour on the floor praising Armstrong and Dryden. 
   
   The lone Democrat to speak, Rep. Donna Edwards (Md.), noted the irony in the vote. “We will do our renaming today,” she said, and then “we will take an ax hammer to NASA’s budget on March 1, at the end of this week, taking out $894 million from an already strapped budget. I dare say future generations will not be inspired by what this Congress will do.” 
   
   The speaker declared another recess. 
   
   Twitter: @milbank 
   
   Read more from Dana Milbank’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. ||||| Politicians have lost their power to frighten me. I no longer believe the sky is falling. 
   
   I have lived through America’s past disasters: Vietnam. Watergate. Disco. 
   
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   reset GOP leadership on sequestration "The Scrum" PODCAST: Sequestration 
   
   We survived them all. We have grown strong at the broken places. 
   
   But now the pols have come up with a new word to panic us: sequester. 
   
   (Also on POLITICO: Boehner: Senators should get 'off their ass') 
   
   It is supposed to scare us witless. But, in truth, hearing a politician tell us, “We are heading toward sequester” is really no scarier than hearing the words, “I don’t like the looks of that mole” or “Welcome to Carnival Cruise Lines.” 
   
   The sequester was designed to be so horrible that both the Republicans and Democrats in Congress would recoil from it. 
   
   All sorts of things will be cut under a sequester: border security, airport security, Head Start, public housing support, NASA, special education, the FBI, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and national defense. 
   
   But do you know what does not get cut? Take a guess. That’s right: 
   
   The salaries of senators and representatives do not get cut under sequester. 
   
   Congressional staffers — those people who actually read and write the laws, get coffee and have to go before the cameras to explain why their boss has been found in a Motel 6 with a pole dancer named Mercedes Dee Lite — face a 20 percent pay cut through furloughs. 
   
   But members of Congress? Their six-figure salaries will continue to roll in, even as money to Medicare patients gets cut. 
   
   (Also on POLITICO: Boehner's big bet) 
   
   So why did anybody expect Congress to be repelled by a sequester? 
   
   Sure, members of Congress might have to figure out how to put those plastic coffee pods in the machines themselves, but these people are not fools. They will order out. If they can figure out how to work the telephones. 
   
   True, the doomsayers say that our national defense will be cut by $42.7 billion. But this still leaves billions and billions for pork: armaments that don’t work and weapons systems that not even the Pentagon wants. Members of Congress insist on spending this money, however, to show voters they can bring home the bacon.
target: – We shouldn't be too worried about the sequester—after all, Congress doesn't exactly seem to be recoiling at the thought. And Roger Simon has a theory on why: Lawmakers' own salaries aren't getting cut, he explains at Politico. Sure, their staffers are facing furloughs that amount to a 20% pay decrease, but members of Congress will keep collecting six-figure salaries. Of course our lawmakers "might have to figure out how to put those plastic coffee pods in the machines themselves, but these people are not fools," he writes. "They will order out. If they can figure out how to work the telephones." In fact, House Republicans are positively excited about the sequester, writes Dana Milbank in the Washington Post, noting their agenda yesterday consisted only of renaming a California NASA research center. They're "pursuing a considered strategy of deliberate idleness," after finally realizing that doing nothing means they get "a 2.5% cut in all federal spending without coughing up a single dollar in tax increases. They have learned to stop worrying and love the sequester." Click for Milbank's full piece; Simon's humorous take is here.