Obama bids to thwart automatic spending cuts

US President Barack Obama will on Thursday unveil plans to forestall automatic budget cuts, increasing spending $74 billion above a cap for 2016. Rolling out budget proposals for the coming year, White House officials said that Obama will seek to freeze the so-called sequester, which would automatically trim spending by about $1 trillion by 2021. The sequester came into effect in 2013 after Democrats and Republicans were unable to reach a deal on cutting the deficit. A White House official said