Congressional Republican leaders slammed President Barack Obama’s sequester speech Tuesday with only two weeks to go until massive across-the-board spending cuts take effect. 
 
 House Speaker John Boehner asked what “spending is the president willing to cut” to keep first responders employed. 
 
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 “Washington Democrats’ newfound concern about the president’s sequester is appreciated, but words alone won’t avert it,” Boehner said in a statement. “Replacing the president’s sequester will require a plan to cut spending that will put us on the path to a budget that is balanced in 10 years.” 
 
 And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Obama proved Tuesday that “more than three months after the November election, President Obama still prefers campaign events to common-sense, bipartisan action.” 
 
 “Surely the President won’t cut funds to first responders when just last year Washington handed out an estimated $115 billion in payments to individuals who weren’t even eligible to receive them, or at a time when 11 different government agencies are funding 90 different green energy programs,” McConnell said in a statement. “That would be a terrible and entirely unnecessary choice by a President who claims to want bipartisan reform.” 
 
 Boehner’s office declined a POLITICO request to speak to the Ohio Republican. Congress is out of session this week as the sequester deadline looms. 
 
 Obama and House Republicans have diametrically different policy prescriptions for solving the automatic cuts that take hold March 1. Boehner wants the package to be solely spending cuts, and Obama prefers a mix of cuts and new tax revenue — from closing so-called loopholes in the Tax Code. 
 
 “We should close loopholes and carve-outs in the Tax Code, but that revenue should be used to lower rates across the board,” Boehner said in a statement sent out by his office. “Tax reform is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to boost job creation in America. It should not be squandered to enable more Washington spending. Spending is the problem, spending must be the focus.” 

 12.07pm ET 
 
 We're going to wrap up our live coverage of President Obama's sequester event. You can read our news story on the event here. 
 
 The president described how the sequester would be devastating to the economy and to hundreds of thousands of individuals and families. The crisis could be averted, he said, if Republicans agreed to make higher taxes part of a new budget deal. 
 
 Republicans responded that they are ready to close certain tax loopholes and end certain deductions, but that they won't do so without a Democratic commitment to cutting spending. 
 
 The president called the sequester a "manufactured crisis," a phrase he used in the state of the union to describe the debt ceiling standoff over the New Year (a standoff due to return next month). The president said he supported a "balanced approach" to ending the sequester, and that means more tax revenue. 
 
 "Hundreds of thousands of Americans added to the unemployment rolls" if sequester cuts take effect, Obama said. "This is not an abstraction. People will lose their jobs." 
 
 If Congress can't get an overarching budget deal by next Friday, they should pass a stopgap measure, Obama said, "not to kick the can down the road, but to give them time to work together."
– President Obama took the stage at a White House event this morning, backed by a crowd of uniformed first responders, to warn against an upcoming round of "automatic brutal spending cuts" that he warned would cost America jobs, harming everything from border patrol to military readiness, education, and emergency response. The middle class, he said, couldn't afford "pain imposed unnecessarily by partisan recklessness and ideological rigidity here in Washington." John Boehner was unimpressed, Politico notes, questioning "what spending is the president willing to cut" to spare first responders. Obama said Democrats had put forward a balanced proposal to avoid the cuts, but "so far at least the ideas that the Republicans have proposed ask nothing of the wealthiest Americans or the biggest corporations," leaving the burden on the middle class, and refusing to remove even one tax loophole. Obama said that wouldn't fly, adding, "I will not sign a plan that harms the middle class." But he said he'd work with anyone to avoid the cuts. "We've got more to do around here … than try to dig ourselves out of self-inflicted wounds." He even suggested a temporary fix "not to kick the can down the road, but to give them time to work together." The Guardian's snarky comment: "Read: to kick the can down the road."