With the deadline for action less than a week away, exasperated governors are joining a White House push to intensify pressure on Congress to prevent a looming budget crisis, AP reported.

Both Democrat and Republican chief executives, gathered in Washington for the National Governors Association annual meeting, warned of widespread economic fallout should Washington lawmakers fail to reach an 11th-hour compromise.

"It's senseless and it doesn't need to happen," Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, said Saturday, Feb 23. "And it's a damn shame, because we've actually had the fastest rate of jobs recovery of any state in our region. And this really threatens to hurt a lot of families in our state and kind of flat line our job growth for the next several months."

Indeed, some governors expressed pessimism that both sides could find a way to avoid the automatic spending cuts set to begin March 1, pointing to the impasse as another crisis between the White House and Congress that spooks businesses from hiring and hampers their ability to construct state spending plans.