In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Q: Senate Democrats will move ahead with a last-ditch sequester avoidance effort this week, ahead of the March 1 deadline for the across-the-board spending reductions to go into effect, Sen. Tim Kaine said Sunday. 
  
 "We laid a plan on the table about 10 days ago, and we will be voting on it this week," the Virginia Democrat said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "This needs to start in the Senate. If we can find a balanced package in the Senate that gets bipartisan support, we can avoid these sequester cuts." 
  
 Hiring freezes and furloughs in the defense sector can be avoided with a last-minute deal before the deadline, Kaine added. 
  
 "There's no reason that this has to happen, we just need to find a balanced approach, and that's the balanced approach that we'll be voting on this week," Kaine said. 
  
 Waiting until the last minute to come up with a solution for sequester and the expiration of the continuing resolution is not the way Congress should be doing business, added Kaine, who sits on the Senate Budget Committee. 
  
 "There's no reason we should be playing this kind of brinksmanship," he said. "Let's get rid of the gimmicks. Sequester, continuing resolution, get back to ordinary budgeting just like what happens at every state capitol every year." 
  
 Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who also sits on the Budget Committee, echoed Kaine's sentiments -- but blamed Democrats. 
  
 "I've been outraged by the fact that we haven't had a budget for three years because the Senate Democrats haven't wanted to do it," the New Hampshire Republican said. "I'm glad that to hear Tim say we should do it, we wouldn't be in these positions, these sequester-type situations if we actually prioritized spending." 
  
 Ayotte added that Senate Democrats' plan to avert sequester relies too heavily on tax increases, and said she'll be working with her Senate Republican colleagues on an alternative plan. 
  
 "It seems like the first thing they come up with is, we're going to raise taxes. After having increased revenue, if you recall, in January, $600 billion over the next 10 years without any spending cuts, I think Republicans should have an alternative in the Senate," Ayotte said. 
  
 "This notion of giving the president the discretion to make the spending cuts, I think that's a cop-out," she added. "So I will be urging my colleagues to have an alternative and for us to present one." 
  
 Read more about: Tim Kaine, Kelly Ayotte, Sequester, Sequestration ||||| Sen. John McCain lashed out at Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood on Sunday for saying Republicans are to blame for sequestration. 
  
 "Shame on Ray LaHood," McCain responded when asked about the transportation secretary's comments during the previous segment of CNN's "State of the Union." 
  
 The Arizona Republican pointed to reporting by The Washington Post's Bob Woodward that says the sequester originated with President Barack Obama. 
  
 "We know whose now it was -- it came from the White House and the president's aides," McCain said. "Despite that the president said during the campaign, 'It won't happen.'" 
  
 Earlier, LaHood said that Republicans in Congress haven't come up with a proposal on sequestration and have been unwilling to work with President Barack Obama to avert the deep, across-the-board cuts. 
  
 "Well, look it, I'm a Republican. My audience is trying to persuade my former colleagues that they need to come to the table with a proposal, which might be they haven't done. While the president has, the Republicans haven't," LaHood said. 
  
 Read more about: John McCain, Ray LaHood, Sequestration ||||| The governors of Maryland and Virginia urged lawmakers on Sunday to avert deep, across-the-board sequestration cuts, saying that jobs in their states are at stake. 
  
 Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican from Virginia, and Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat from Maryland, presented a united front on CBS's "Face the Nation," urging Congress to work across party lines to avoid the cuts particularly to the defense sector. 
  
 "These are job-killing cuts, and we need to find a way to avoid these," O'Malley said. "On both sides of the Potomac we sit in the middle of a corridor of science and security. Sequester stands to wipe out a lot of hard-fought job gains in Virginia and in Maryland. So whatever our differences may be, we understand that this is an economic threat. This is going to hurt a lot of moms and dads in our region." 
  
 McDonnell agreed, saying his message to Republicans in Congress is that they need to get the job done. 
  
 "The sequester was put in place to be a hammer, not a policy," McDonnell said. "And here we are, a week away." 
  
 Read more about: Bob McDonnell, Martin O'Malley, Sequester, Sequestration ||||| Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Sunday railed against lawmakers' inability to avoid sequestration, saying that teachers are already losing their jobs in anticipation of the deep, across-the-board cuts. 
  
 "There are literally teachers now who are getting pink slips, who are getting notices that they can't come back this fall," Duncan said on CBS's "Face the Nation." 
  
 Local school districts are already looking at their budgets for next fall, he said, and have to start to making cutbacks now in preparation for sequester budget reductions. 
  
 "We don't have any ability with dumb cuts like this to figure out what the right thing to do is," Duncan said. "It just means a lot more children will not get the kinds of services and opportunities they need, and as many as 40,000 teachers could lose their jobs." 
  
 Duncan added that he's angry at lawmakers for their inability to come up with a solution when teachers' jobs are on the line. 
  
 "The fact that this is so easily avoidable is why I'm so angry," he said. "If folks would just work together, compromise, find the middle ground, we wouldn't put districts and families and children through this much trauma. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever." 
  
 When asked whether he thinks President Barack Obama's administration regrets proposing the idea of sequestration, Duncan repeated that the cuts were never intended to come to pass. 
  
 "Sequester was set up to be painful to everybody, recognizing the dysfunction of Congress, to be so painful it would force people to come to the table," Duncan said. "And the fact that people in Congress are so tone-deaf to what's really going on in their districts ... that to me is unimaginable." 
  
 Read more about: Arne Duncan, Education, Teachers, Sequestration ||||| Sen. John McCain said Sunday he expects former Sen. Chuck Hagel to be confirmed by the full Senate this week as the next secretary of defense. 
  
 "The president deserves an up-or-down-vote," the Arizona Republican said on CNN's "State of the Union." "Now Democrats will say, 'We've never done that before, well they have, and they did with [John] Bolton and John Tower and others. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't give Chuck Hagel an up-or-down vote, and we should." 
  
 Asked whether he thought anything would derail the nomination at this point, McCain said he expected a confirmation. 
  
 "I think it will happen, barring some additional revelation concerning his comments about Israel and all those other unfortunate things he's said in the past," McCain said. 
  
 Read more about: John McCain, Chuck Hagel ||||| A top House Republican is calling for more discretion on applying the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts that are set to hit on Friday, absent an agreement to avoid them. 
  
 Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said federal agencies need flexibility to implement the sequester, rather than allowing the spending cuts to occur indiscriminately. 
  
 “There will be an impact on national security, there’s no doubt,” Rogers said of the sequester on ABC’s “This Week.” "So it's really only 2 cents on the dollar over the whole federal budget, but they've scrunched that down into seven months and highlighted, or at least put most of the burden, on the Defense Department. So that is going to have an impact." 
  
 The sequester is split evenly between defense and domestic programs. But Rogers argued that the programs subject to the sequester can’t be treated equally, and that federal agencies need discretion on how to best apply those cuts to minimize harmful effects on programs, particularly those concerning national security. 
  
 Read more about: Mike Rogers, Sequestration ||||| Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who’s been frantically sounding the alarm about the sequestration's effect on air travel, said Sunday that he’s still optimistic Congress can strike a deal to avert the budget cuts – now just days away from going into effect. 
  
 "If Republicans and Democrats get together this week and take a look at the president's plan, which he put on the table to save $85 billion, this does not have to happen," LaHood said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "There is still time to reach a compromise." 
  
 As for prospects for a last-minute compromise, LaHood said: “I hope so. I do. It's been done before. It was done at the 11th hour to save us from going under the fiscal cliff. It can be done again. And it can be done by Friday." 
  
 The Obama administration has pulled out LaHood as one of its top spokesmen of the detrimental consequences of sequestration as part of a public-relations offensive that has drawn criticism from Republicans. 
  
 “Stop sending out your Cabinet secretaries to scare the American people,” said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, after LaHood on “Meet the Press.” 
  
 But LaHood defended the White House’s strategy, arguing that the administration was depicting an accurate picture of the sequester’s effect. 
  
 “We’re not making this up in order to put pain on the American people,” LaHood said. 
  
 And despite the effects on the nation’s air travel – such as lengthened security lines and furloughed air traffic controllers – LaHood insisted that the safety of travelers would not be affected. 
  
 "One thing we never compromise on is safety," LaHood said. "We will never take a back seat to safety. Safety will not be compromised. But we will have to work with the airlines in slowing planes down. But there'll be enough controllers to make sure planes are guided in and out of airports safely." 
  
  
  
 Read more about: Bobby Jindal, Ray LaHood, Sequestration ||||| Sen. John McCain on Sunday held out the possibility of a Senate hold on John Brennan's nomination to head the CIA over the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. 
  
 The Arizona Republican said he'd examine his options after his questions have been answered by the White House, but wouldn't rule out placing a hold on Brennan's nomination. 
  
 "Look, I don't want to put a hold on anybody. But the American people deserve answers about Benghazi. There are so many questions that are still out there, including what was the president doing the night Benghazi happened?" McCain said on CNN's "State of the Union." 
  
 "He needs to answer these questions. And they say, why now? It's the only time we have maximum leverage -- that's just a fact of life around Washington," McCain said. 
  
 The senator also repeated questions that came up during Brennan's Senate intelligence committee hearing. 
  
 "Mr. Brennan said that he was opposed to waterboarding and torture, but at the same time he said it had saved lives," McCain said. "I'd like to know what lives were saved, because the information I have is it saved no one's life. There's a lot of misinformation." 
  
 Read more about: John McCain, John Brennan, Libya, Benghazi |||||
A: 
With five days to go before a little thing called the sequester kicks in, there are a lot of fingers being pointed at and from both sides of the aisle. A look around the Sunday talk show dial, as per Politico: Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine: "We laid a plan on the table about 10 days ago, and we will be voting on it this week. If we can find a balanced package in the Senate that gets bipartisan support, we can avoid these sequester cuts. There's no reason that this has to happen." Maine Sen. Kelly Ayotte: "I've been outraged by the fact that we haven't had a budget for three years because the Senate Democrats haven't wanted to do it. I'm glad that to hear Tim say we should do it; we wouldn't be in these positions, these sequester-type situations if we actually prioritized spending." Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood: "I'm a Republican. My audience is trying to persuade my former colleagues that they need to come to the table with a proposal, which might be they haven't done. While the president has, the Republicans haven't." John McCain: "Shame on Ray Lahood." Education Secretary Arne Duncan: "We don't have any ability with dumb cuts like this to figure out what the right thing to do is. It just means a lot more children will not get the services and opportunities they need, and as many as 40,000 teachers could lose their jobs. The fact that this is so easily avoidable is why I'm so angry." Bobby Jindal: “Stop sending out your Cabinet secretaries to scare the American people." Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers: “There will be an impact on national security, there’s no doubt. So it's really only 2 cents on the dollar over the whole federal budget, but they've scrunched that down into seven months and highlighted, or at least put most of the burden, on the Defense Department. So that is going to have an impact." Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley: "These are job-killing cuts, and we need to find a way to avoid these. Sequester stands to wipe out a lot of hard-fought job gains in Virginia and in Maryland. So whatever our differences may be, we understand that this is an economic threat." Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell: The sequester was put in place to be a hammer, not a policy. And here we are, a week away." McCain on John Brennan's nomination: "Look, I don't want to put a hold on anybody. But the American people deserve answers about Benghazi. He needs to answer these questions. And they say, why now? It's the only time we have maximum leverage." McCain on Chuck Hagel: "The president deserves an up-or-down-vote. I think (his confirmation) will happen, barring some additional revelation concerning his comments about Israel and all those other unfortunate things he's said in the past."