[h=3]By JARED A. FAVOLE And DAMIAN PALETTA[/h]
Bloomberg NewsU.S. President Barack Obama painted a dire picture of what would happen should the automatic spending cuts begin as scheduled next Friday.
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama on Tuesday prodded Congress to act to avoid automatic spending cuts set to kick in March 1, as deficit hawks Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles proposed a detailed plan for rewriting the tax code and implementing deep new spending cuts.
"These cuts are not smart, they are not fair, they will hurt our economy, they will add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the unemployment rolls," Mr. Obama said in remarks delivered at the White House. "This is not an abstraction: People will lose their jobs, the unemployment rate might tick up again."
Bloomberg NewsU.S. President Barack Obama painted a dire picture of what would happen should the automatic spending cuts begin as scheduled next Friday.
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama on Tuesday prodded Congress to act to avoid automatic spending cuts set to kick in March 1, as deficit hawks Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles proposed a detailed plan for rewriting the tax code and implementing deep new spending cuts.
"These cuts are not smart, they are not fair, they will hurt our economy, they will add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the unemployment rolls," Mr. Obama said in remarks delivered at the White House. "This is not an abstraction: People will lose their jobs, the unemployment rate might tick up again."