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Obama keeps pressure on Congress for deficit deal
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The Associated Press-
U.S. President Barack Obama promised Monday to veto any efforts to get rid of automatic spending cuts that are to follow the failure of a congressional "supercommittee" to agree on how to cut the budget deficit by $1.2 trillion.
"We need to keep the pressure up to compromise" on deficit cutting, Obama said.
Failure by the panel will trigger about $1 trillion US over nine years in automatic across-the-board spending cuts to a wide range of domestic programs and the Pentagon budget, starting in 2013, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
This action, called a "sequester," would also generate $169 billion in savings from lower interest costs on the national debt.
Earlier, supercommittee co-chairs Patty Murray, a Democratic senator from Washington, and Jeb Hensarling, a Republican House representative from Texas, said despite "intense deliberations" the members of the panel had been unable "to bridge the committee's significant differences."
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