Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said during an interview with ABC's 'This Week' that President Barack Obama will not negotiate over the debt limit with Republicans seeking spending cuts. Lew reiterates Obama won't negotiate over debt limit

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew says President Barack Obama will not sign government funding bills that cut domestic spending and will not negotiate over the debt limit with Republicans seeking spending cuts.

"Congress can't let us default. Congress has to do its work," Lew said Sunday on ABC's "This Week," adding the president has has been "crystal clear" that raising the country's debt limit this fall is not an issue of negotiation between Congress and the White House.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also said last week he'll not negotiate over raising the country's borrowing limit, a position that echoes that of the Obama administration. House Republicans hope to use the debt ceiling as leverage to extract more spending cuts, and a group in both chambers has stated they are opposing any spending bill that funds Obamacare.

"I certainly hope that Congress isn't looking to create confrontations and false crises because we did see, in 2011, how bad that is for the American economy," Lew said. "The mere fact of negotiating over the debt limit, after 2011, would introduce this notion that somehow there's a question about whether or not we're going to pay our bills, whether or not we're going to protect the full faith and credit of the United States."

Lew also said from his conversations with congressional leaders that there's a majority in Congress that wants to replace the sequester's automatic spending cuts. A group of Senate Republicans, including Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona, are meeting with White House staff to try to find a replacement for the sequester's broad, automatic cuts. That solution can't fix military and defense spending at the expense of other priorities, Lew said.

"What the president said - and has written to Congress is - that they cannot fix the problems created by the across-the-board cuts-- known as sequestration by cutting domestic priorities in order to fund defense. That's unacceptable," Lew said on NBC's "Meet the Press," adding: "He won't sign that. "