NEW YORK TIMES: Governors of both parties said on Saturday that they knew federal budget cuts were coming, and they pleaded with President Obama and Congress to give them more discretion over the use of federal money so they could minimize the pain for their citizens.
The governors, arriving here for the winter meeting of the National Governors Association, said that the automatic across-the-board cuts in federal spending that are scheduled to begin at the end of the week, were creating havoc, threatening jobs and sapping economic growth in their states.
They urged the president and Congress to strike a deal that would allow state officials to set priorities and prune spending in a more selective way. They said the cuts would be easier to cope with if they had more freedom to decide how to allocate the savings in education, health care and public safety programs… (more)
