In response to Poll: Plurality Favor Sequester, Think President Used Scare Tactics:

This afternoon, Senate Democrats voted down a Republican-led effort to reopen the White House to public tours.

 There is some good news, however:

Senators nibbled away what they considered the worst parts of the
sequester by restoring the military’s tuition assistance programs and
adding back the money for food inspectors at slaughterhouses. Without
that money, inspectors were going to have to be furloughed, which would
have cut 5 billions of pounds of beef, pork and poultry production out
of the U.S. economy this year.

I have to think that keeping the White House closed to tours is an important priority for Obama, because if there was a will to free up the money to open the building back up, they’d find a way. This isn’t rocket science.

One Senate Democrat, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, said that Coburn’s proposal would not have fixed the problem because White House tours “are governed by the security service, which is not part of this amendment, so that would not be affected.”

But Senator Coburn countered that the National Park Service does have something to do with White House
tours because they could take the money and reallocate it. “It is not a
Secret Service problem. It is a national park problem,” he said.