Will the clouds part, the sun shine and a sequester solution be found?

Friday's deadline looms and "oh, it's gonna happen," says one Republican congressman. We continue to scour news outlets for stories that help make sense of the sequester.

Friday's deadline looms, and as we heard earlier today on Morning Edition: "Oh, it's gonna happen."

The "it" is sequestration — $85 billion worth of across-the-board federal spending cuts that are due to start kicking in at the end of Friday unless Republican and Democratic leaders somehow bridge their differences.

Morning Edition also zeroed in on how the budget cuts might affect food inspections and air travel.

We've been looking around each day this week for "should-read" stories about the sequester, in the hope they'll help us all figure out what's going on. Our previous posts: Monday's; Tuesday's; Wednesday's.

Today's should-reads:

-- "Dual Senate Sequester Votes Expected To Fail." (Politico)

-- "Jockeying Stalls Deals On Cuts." (The Wall Street Journal)

-- "How To Avoid The Sequester And Give Both Parties What They Want." (The Christian Science Monitor)

All of NPR's sequester coverage, by the way, is collected here.

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