President Obama and Vice President Biden spoke to a bipartisan assemblage of state governors. In his remarks Vice President Biden compared the frustration existing between the Obama administration Congress with frustration governors might feel dealing with split legislatures. President Obama called on House Speaker John Boehner and congressional Republicans to compromise with him to avoid across-the-board sequester cuts which were scheduled to go into effect on March 1.
The governors were in Washington, D.C., to attend the National Governors Association (NGA) 2013 Winter Meeting, an annual meeting in which a bipartisan group of U.S. governors gathers in Washington, D.C. to discuss issues affecting the states.
“Sequestration,” a legal procedure in which every federal agency has the same percentage of its budget taken back in order to cut deficit spending, was agreed to in the Budget Control Act of 2011 and scheduled to happen on March 1, 2013.