WASHINGTON (AP) — International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde urged the U.S. on Thursday not to “put a brake on this beginning of recovery” by failing to resolve an impasse over the budget and cutting back government spending too deeply.

Sharp criticism of the across-the-board federal spending cuts imposed in March and known as sequestration has been a theme of Lagarde’s speeches over the past months. She told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington that the budget cutting now underway in the U.S. in this “blunt and relatively blind way caused by sequestration, among other things, is excessive.”