Obama calls for short-term spending cuts

US President Barack Obama on Tuesday, February 5 called for stop-gap spending curbs and tax reforms to avert multi-billion dollar budget cuts due to hammer the economy on March 1, but hit a Republican brick wall. Obama warned the fragile economy could not afford the blow from huge cuts to defense and other government programs, known as the sequester, and the jobs of millions of Americans should not be threatened by wrangling in Washington. The president said if Congress could not act on a bigger deficit cutting package by March 1, lawmakers should pass a smaller plan of spending cuts and tax reforms to forestall the economically damaging impact of the sequester.

Read more about the imminent spending cuts on CNN.