Bully Pulpit

Obama Threatens Veto

If Congress alters automatic spending cuts.

President Obama threatened to veto any changes to the automatic spending cuts that are scheduled to take effect in 2013 if Congress is unable to come up with other ways to reduce government deficits. Obama said the automatic cuts should remain in place in order to add pressure and get results. The threat came just hours after supercommittee co-chairs Jeb Hensarling and Patty Murray released a statement, saying deficit talks were dead. "It will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee's deadline," the statement reads. The Dow Jones industrial average took a big hit Monday, sliding nearly 250 points, or about 2 percent, on news that Congress’s supercommittee on deficit reduction would announce its failure.