By Mark Felsenthal and Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Friday that government spending cuts due to take effect March 1 would have harsh consequences for ordinary Americans and the U.S. economy, seeking to turn up pressure on Congress to come up with a plan to avoid what Washington calls "sequestration."

President Barack Obama said the spending cuts could weaken U.S. military preparedness.

"There is no reason, no reason for that to happen," Obama said at a farewell ceremony for Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

"Putting our fiscal house in order calls for a balanced approach, not massive, indiscriminate cuts that could have a severe impact on our military preparedness," he said.

In its strongest warnings yet, the White House separately gave examples of what it said program cuts would mean: 1,000 fewer FBI officers, mass layoffs of government meat and food inspectors, and aid benefits slashed for hundreds of thousands of low-income women and children.

"Sequester is a blunt and indiscriminate instrument that poses a serious threat to our national security, domestic priorities and the economy," Danny Werfel, a senior official at the White House budget office, told reporters at a briefing.

"It does not represent a responsible way to achieve deficit reduction," he said.

The administration repeated its plea to Congress to put off the planned reductions, which the White House said would slash non-defense programs by 9 percent across the board and defense programs by 13 percent in the current fiscal year, resulting in "furloughs," or temporary layoffs, for hundreds of thousands of government workers.

White House economic aide Jason Furman said it was up to Congress to work out the details of how to raise revenues and cut spending so both sides have time to agree on how replace the sequester with a more acceptable fiscal belt-tightening program.

"What we're trying to do now is make sure Congress can buy the time it needs in order to do this entitlement reform, tax reform, that's a much better solution to our problems than letting the sequester hit," Furman said.

Republicans said that while they agree sequestration could be devastating, the president must propose spending cuts if he wants to see the deep automatic cuts replaced with something more palatable.

"Spending is still the problem," said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner. "It's time to finally make the cuts and reforms we all know are needed to save and strengthen our safety net programs."

Republican aides said there had been no outreach from the White House to senior members of their party on the sequester.

"Not a peep," a Senate Republican leadership aide said.

LEGACY OF 2011 BUDGET BATTLES

Sequestration is a legacy of the 2011 impasse between Obama and congressional Republicans over raising the nation's debt limit. Republicans, unhappy about the nation's deficit, wanted to match any increases in the borrowing cap with cuts to government spending.

The president balked at cutting social safety net programs, and the nation came close to defaulting on its debt as a deal eluded negotiators. The two sides finally agreed to raise the debt ceiling but vowed to continue negotiating to cut the deficit, setting up a deadline for the painful automatic sequestration cuts as an incentive to come to terms.

The automatic cuts were reportedly suggested by the White House but were agreed to by both sides. The spending reductions are divided equally among nondefense and defense programs in an effort to make politicians at both ends of the political spectrum feel the pressure to compromise. Continued...