Obama to Governors: Tell Congress to Stop Spending Cuts

Facing an end of the week deadline, President Barack Obama said Monday that Congress can avert sweeping across-the-board cuts with “just a little bit of compromise,” as he sought to stick lawmakers with the blame if the budget ax falls.

Speaking to the nation’s governors, Obama acknowledged that the impact of the $85 billion in cuts may not be felt immediately. But he also said the uncertainty already is impacting the economy, as the Pentagon and other agencies get ready to furlough employees.

“At some point we’ve got to do some governing,” Obama said. “And certainly what we can’t do is keep careening from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis.”

Despite Obama’s urgent rhetoric, there is no indication that the White House and Congress were negotiating a deal to avoid cuts by Friday’s deadline. White House press secretary Jay Carney said he had no new telephone calls to announce since the president’s conversations with Republican congressional leaders last week. “We will continue to engage with Congress this week,” Carney said.

Obama wants to offset the so-called sequester through a combination of targeted spending cuts and revenue increases, but Republicans oppose any plan that would include tax hikes.

Emerging from a closed-door meeting with Obama, governors said the president had assured the administration is pursuing solutions, but didn’t offer assurances that officials would find a way ahead out ahead of the deadline.

The $85 billion budget-cutting mechanism could affect everything from commercial flights to classrooms to meat inspections. Domestic and defense spending alike would be trimmed, leading to furloughs for hundreds of thousands of government workers and contractors.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said the cuts would harm the readiness of U.S. fighting forces. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said travelers could see delayed flights. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said 70,000 fewer children from low-income families would have access to Head Start programs. And furloughed meat inspectors could leave plants idled.

The White House continued laying out in stark terms what the cuts would mean for government services, dispatching Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to warn of the implications for critical security functions.

Despite the Friday deadline, there are no serious negotiations happening between the White House and Congress. Obama is focused instead are trying to rally public support for his stance in the debate by warning Americans of the dire consequences of the across-the-board cuts.

The president told the governors that cuts would “slow our economy, eliminate good jobs, and leave a lot of folks who are already pretty thinly stretched scrambling to figure out what to do.”

The spending cuts have frustrated governors attending the National Governors Association meeting in Washington. They contend it has created widespread uncertainty in the economy and hampered economic recovery in their states.

“The president needs to show leadership,” said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican considered a potential 2016 presidential contender, outside the West Wing. “The reality is it can be done. This administration has an insatiable appetite for new revenue.”

This article appeared in print on page 1 of the February 26th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.