“Continued policy action is needed to boost the recovery,” Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s managing director, said at a news conference. “We believe the U.S. authorities do not have a lot of space available to act, but they should use it to support the recovery in the near term.”   
Lagarde also encouraged U.S. lawmakers to raise the debt ceiling. 

President Barack Obama’s proposed budget would cut the federal deficit by 3 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. The IMF warned that cutting at that rate would be too rapid and that the United States should only cut 1 percent.

The IMF predicted the unemployment rate would only drop to 7.9 percent in the United States in 2013 and the growth rate would only be 1 percent for the next year, according to CNN.