President Barack Obama reported during the press-conference Friday that the Republicans in the Congress refused to negotion on the balanced approach to the budget and add more taxes to avert massive cuts that will start automatically on 01 March, Friday even as he tried to reverse them.
At the same time Obama was eager to avert a government shutdown that is why he was willing to accept budget cuts that cost billions of dollars and risk to decrease GDB at 0.5pp.
Congressional leaders and the White House had time until Friday to make a deal on automatic budget cuts of 85 billion US dollars in 2013 fiscal year.