President Barack Obama on Tuesday warned of potential devastation from looming spending cuts, but the bickering in Washington suggested lawmakers are too far apart to strike a timely compromise. Even as the Federal Reserve chairman sounded the alarm 72 hours before $85 billion in sequester cuts begin to bite, the president's top Senate ally said he would prefer the budget ax to a deal that did not raise new tax revenues. "Until there is some agreement on revenue, I believe we should just go ahead with the sequester," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said.