As sequester nears, no sign of progress At the White House, President Obama told a gathering of the nation's governors that "Congress is poised to allow a series of arbitrary, automatic budget cuts to kick in that will slow our economy, eliminate good jobs and leave a lot of folks who are already pretty thinly stretched scrambling to figure out what to do." Obama urged the governors to lobby their states" Congressional delegations, telling them, "These cuts do not have to happen. Congress can turn them off anytime with just a little bit of compromise. On the Republican side, a trio of governors on Monday argued that Obama was trying to frighten the public about the impact of the cuts, and urged him to continue pursuing alternate spending reductions as they criticized his call for new tax revenue. "I think he's trying to scare the American people," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told reporters at a Republican Governors Association news conference following a meeting with Obama at the White House. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, vice chairman of the RGA, and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley appeared alongside Jindal and echoed his criticism of the president. "My kids could find 83 billion dollars" to cut "from a four-trillion-dollar budget," Haley said. The deep cuts, split evenly between defense and domestic spending, are set to begin Friday unless lawmakers act to avert them. Democrats are advocating a mix of new tax revenues and alternate spending reductions as a means of avoiding the sequester. Republicans are opposed to any tax increases. Obama has an "insatiable appetite for new revenues," Jindal, the chairman of the RGA, said. The sequester involves about $85 billion in cuts, roughly split between military and nonmilitary domestic programs. It was imposed in the 2011 deal that ended the debt-ceiling crisis. The cuts were meant as a scare tactic, not as a real-world policy: They were so deep and so painful, it was believed, that the two parties would be forced to replace them with something else. On Monday, the Obama administration continued its effort to detail the harmful consequences of the cuts. Over the weekend, it released a state-by-state breakdown of the projected impact. On Monday, it released an agency-by-agency breakdown. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano warned Monday that her agency would be forced to furlough 5,000 border control agents under the mandatory spending cuts. She said the cuts also would disrupt Homeland Security's ability to conduct customs inspections at ports, leading to increased wait times for travelers and cargo shipments. Disaster relief funding would be reduced by $1 billion, she added, meaning relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy and tornados in Joplin, Mo., and Tuscaloosa, Ala., could be cut.