WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama said Monday he will veto any effort to get rid of automatic spending cuts that would begin to take effect in 2013 if Congress can't find other ways of trimming government deficits.

Those spending cuts include significant reductions to the Pentagon that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said would be devastating to the military.

Obama issued his threat an hour after leaders of Congress' deficit-reduction supercommittee announced that they had failed to reach agreement on cutting the debt. The inability of the bipartisan committee to meet its deadline means the government is facing about $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts that start to kick in in January 2013.