From Reuters.com:
CAMP DAVID, Md., May 19 (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama will press European leaders to ease up on fiscal austerity and focus on economic growth at a summit on Saturday that will discuss ways to stem turmoil in the euro zone and head off the risk of global contagion.

“Hopefully we’ll get some stuff done,” Obama told Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti as he and other summit participants arrived for Friday evening dinner at a lodge at the secluded presidential retreat.

Obama earlier in the day aligned himself with Monti and new French President Francois Hollande by urging a solution to the euro zone crisis that combines fiscal belt-tightening measures with a “strong growth agenda.”

On the other side of the debate is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has pushed fiscal austerity as a means of bringing down huge debt levels that are burdening European economies.

Voters in euro zone countries have shown frustration with that approach, ejecting governments such as that of Nicolas Sarkozy, who was defeated by Hollande, a socialist, in the May 6 French presidential election.