Obama: Time to start governing
2013-02-25 21:50
Washington - US President Barack Obama warned warring
politicians on Monday it was time to start governing as Washington headed into
another manufactured crisis threatening the fragile economy.
Obama told an annual meeting of state governors at the
White House that huge budget cuts due to hit on 1 March would "slow our
economy, eliminate good jobs" and leave Americans with "thinly
stretched" budgets wondering what to do.
The president is demanding that congressional Republicans
stave off a set of arbitrary, automatic spending cuts known as the sequester by
closing tax loopholes that benefit the rich and corporations.
"We can't just cut our way to prosperity. Cutting
alone is not an economic policy," Obama told Democratic and Republican
governors in the State Dining Room of the White House.
Many Republicans agree that the sequester, which imposes
across the board cuts of $85bn this year from government programme, is a bad
way to cut spending and reduce the deficit.
But they argue that Obama is not serious about reining in
spending and warn the president that his success in getting higher income tax
rates on the rich late last year is the last time they will permit him to raise
more revenue.
Obama, who no longer has to worry about answering to
voters, warned Washington had to "get past its obsession with focusing on
the next election instead of the next generation”.
"All of us are concerned about our politics, both in
our own party as well as the other party. But at some point we've got to do
some governing.
"What we can't do is keep careening from
manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis.
"The American people have worked hard and long to
dig themselves out of one crisis. They don't need us creating another
one."
