Gov. Scott Walker and other Republican governors criticized the president’s across-the-board spending cuts scheduled to take effect this week during a press conference in Washington, D.C., on Friday.

The governor said he believes these $85 billion in federal cuts, known as the sequester, are irresponsible, arbitrary and President Barack Obama has resisted offering a reasonable alternative, spokesperson Cullen Werwie said in an email to The Badger Herald.

The email added the White House’s state-by-state sequester release detailing the spending reduction breakdown for Wisconsin is “essentially talking points.” Werwie’s email said the state will not know the full details of specific cuts until Friday or when there is additional federal action.

During the Republican Governor’s Association press conference, Walker said White House officials should have met with the governors before releasing these state-by-state sequester effects.

“I think it’s pretty clear those were put out for political purposes, not to educate the governors, because you have a meeting scheduled today with all the governors across America,” Walker said. “If you were serious about having a discussion with governors about the implications, you wouldn’t give it to the press before you gave it to governors.”

Walker has downplayed the effects of the sequester, encouraging Republicans in Congress to “call the bluff” of Obama in an interview with Fox News this Monday.

The White House statement said the sequester cuts would reduce pay to the state’s Department of Defense employees by $12.4 million, trim funding to Education for Children with Disabilities by about $10 million and take another $8.5 million from primary and secondary education.

Andrew Reschovsky, a University of Wisconsin public affairs and applied economics professor, said the governor is correct the effects of the sequester on the state will have underwhelming impacts, because it does not have a large defense industry.

“Certainly, the direct impacts in the short run will be relatively modest,” he said. “They may sound like big numbers, but relative to the size the state provides, these small millions are relatively small. The indirect impact of this slower economic growth will have some impact on Wisconsin.”

Obama’s deputy director of the National Council, Jason Furman, disagreed. He said in a conference call Monday the 9 percent spending cuts and 13 percent nondefense cuts the sequester will likely apply Friday will be quite significant and result in hundreds of thousands of jobs lost nationwide.

He added these daunting economic ramifications do not have to become a reality.

“This is all avoidable,” Furman said. “There is a much better path. The sequester was designed to be a bad policy.”

Furman noted Congress created the arbitrary cuts as a last resort in case both parties could not reach an agreement to reduce spending in a balanced way, such as the resolution Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid proposed.

However, Obama said in the press conference Democrats must also compromise to avoid the sequester, which will have greater impacts the longer Congress waits to come up with an alternative.

“Democrats like me need to acknowledge we’re going to have to make modest reforms in Medicare if we want the program to be there for future generations, and if we hope to invest in critical things like education, research and infrastructure,” Obama said.