WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama and congressional leaders plan to meet at the White House on Friday to discuss the $85 billion in automatic spending cuts set to start the same day, according to a White House official.
The meeting follows weeks of disagreement over how to avert the cuts, known as the sequester, and comes after both political parties have spent the last few days blaming each other for the lack of progress on a replacement plan.
The sequester officially kicks in on Friday, and the scheduling of the meeting for that day is effectively an acknowledgment that the start of the sequester won't be averted.
Mr. Obama will be meeting with House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.). Mr. Obama and his administration have spent the last few days detailing the consequences of the sequester.
"The sequester will weaken America's economic recovery," the president said Tuesday at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia, where workers could lose their jobs if the sequester kicks in.
Republicans have accused the president of staging a public-relations campaign and scaring Americans about the sequester's consequences rather than taking steps to avert it. The White House says Mr. Obama has already detailed his approach to solving the sequester, but Republicans don't like it because it includes new tax revenue.
The meeting will represent Mr. Obama's first face-to-face discussion with congressional leaders over the sequester, though he has called them to discuss the issue.
With the cuts set to take effect in just a few days, Republicans have been devising plans that would give the Obama administration more flexibility to minimize the damage. But the president dismissed such efforts as futile. Cutting $85 billion before the fiscal year ends in seven months will create inescapable harm, the president said.
"There's no smart way to do that," he said. "You don't want to have to choose between, 'Do I close funding for the disabled kid or the poor kid? Do I close this Navy shipyard or some other one?' When you're doing things in a way that's not smart, you can't gloss over the pain and the impact it's going to have on the economy."
—Peter Nicholas and Janet Hook contributed to this article. 
