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SACRAMENTO – As states across the country struggle to deal with massive budget deficits, a number — including California — have resorted to attempting to sell state office buildings, pouring the proceeds into the general funds, and lease back the space. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former governor of California, was one of those, moving to sell and lease back 11 state office buildings, providing $1.2 billion in revenues to a state budget that sorely needs it.

Governor Jerry Brown, the Democrat who just took over for Mr. Schwarzenegger, announced he was canceling that deal on Wednesday, riding against the tide in many states as he denounced lease-back deals like this one as fiscally irresponsible. Mr. Brown argued that while the sale might provide burst of revenues, it made no sense for the state to give up valuable real estate that it needs, and to turn around and rent something that it now owns.

Mr. Brown said that over 35 years, it would cost $6 billion more to lease back the buildings than it would cost to keep and maintain them. “The sale of the building really didn’t make much sense,” he said, adding, “‘We are not kicking the can down the road. We are not engaging in smoke and mirrors.”

However, this move has created a new problem for Mr. Brown as he is struggling to fill a $25 billion budget shortfall: he now needs to come up with that $1.2 billion. To that end, Mr. Brown proposed borrowing it from various state funds, with a pledge to pay it back in three years. That is based on the assumption that his package of budget cuts and taxes are approved by the legislature and voters, putting the budget in balance, hardly a sure thing.

Mr. Brown rejected the suggestion that he, too, was engaging in fiscal gimmickry with his borrowing scheme to hold on to the buildings. “Selling state buildings are the ultimate kick-the-can down the road,” he said.

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Drew Angerer/The New York TimesPresident Obama with President Hu Jintao of China on Wednesday at the White House.

10:47 a.m. | Updated Declaring that China and the United States have ‘’an enormous stake in each other’s success,’’ President Obama welcomed President Hu Jintao of China to the White House on Wednesday with an elaborate color-guard ceremony that included a colonial fife and drum band and a 21-gun salute.

The formal White House arrival ceremony – the 21-gun salute is reserved solely for visiting heads of state — was a display of pomp and circumstance that stood in stark contrast with the tough rhetoric the Obama administration is employing in its relationship with China on issues from trade to currency and human rights.

And indeed, Mr. Obama did not entirely abandon that rhetoric Wednesday morning. After promoting the virtues of Chinese and American cooperation, the president – the 2009 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize – used the ceremony to deliver a gentle reminder to China, which is holding the 2010 winner of the prize, Liu Xiaobo, as a political prisoner.

“We also know this,’’ the president said: “History shows that societies are more harmonious, nations are more successful and the world is more just when the rights and responsibilities of all nations and all people are upheld, including the universal rights of every human being.’’

Mr. Hu, speaking through a translator, used his remarks to call for the United States and China to “adopt a long-term perspective, seek common ground while reserving differences and work together to achieve sustained, sound and steady development of our relations.”

The White House announced shortly after the ceremony that the Chinese government had agreed to buy 200 airplanes from Boeing, a $19 billion deal that is the centerpiece of $45 billion worth of American exports to China tied to President Hu Jintao’s state visit to Washington. China has also agreed to scrap a policy that favors Chinese technology firms for big government contracts, a senior administration official said.

As is customary with high-profile diplomatic visits, many of these trade deals had been cooked up for some time and saved for Mr. Hu’s arrival. They include a railway contract for General Electric, a deal by Cummins Engine to produce a hybrid bus, and a joint venture between Honeywell and Haier, a Chinese appliance maker. The official said these deals would support 235,000 jobs in 12 states.

With Mr. Hu by his side, Mr. Obama stood, his posture erect and his gaze fixed forward, as the guns began to fire, while a military band played the national anthem of the People’s Republic of China. Then, as the music shifted into the familiar strains of the Star Spangled Banner, the president slowly raised his right hand and put it across his chest, underneath a tiny flag pin on the lapel of his coat.

The crowd was much thinner for Mr. Hu than it has been for arrival ceremonies past. When Pope Benedict XVI and the Queen of England visited Washington to meet with Mr. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, thousands packed the South Lawn, elbowing their way past one another to take cell phone pictures.

On Wednesday, As Mr. Obama escorted Mr. Hu around the South Lawn for the customary reviewing of troops, they stopped to shake the hands of a small crowd of schoolchildren – including Mr. Obama’s 9-year-old daughter, Sasha – waving tiny American and Chinese flags.

Although Mr. Hu and Mr. Obama met for a private dinner at the White House Tuesday night, Wednesday morning’s ceremony marked the official start for Mr. Hu’s White House visit.

The two presidents will have  a busy day that will include private meetings, a session with Chinese and American business executives, a news conference, a formal lunch at the State Department, as well as a state dinner in Mr. Hu’s honor. On Thursday, the Chinese president will travel to Capitol Hill to meet Congressional leaders, and then travel to Chicago.

The last time Mr. Hu came to Washington, in 2006, when Mr. Bush was president, his arrival ceremony was marred by a protester from the Falun Gong spiritual sect, who had infiltrated the event using press credentials – an embarrassment to the Bush administration.

Wednesday’s ceremony went off without any diplomatic hitches, but there was a tense moment in the crowd when Deborah Mullen, the wife of Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, fainted and fell to the ground during the ceremony. She was escorted out by Bill Daley, the White House chief of staff, and was attended to by White House medics.

Mr. Obama began his remarks Wednesday by harking back to the visit of another Chinese president, Deng Xiaoping, in the winter of 1979, when  Jimmy Carter was in the White House, and the two countries engaged in what Mr. Obama called ‘’the historic normalization’’ of relations.

“The 30 years since has been a time of growing exchanges and understanding,’’ the president said. “With this visit, we can lay the foundation for the next 30 years.’’

In addition to the trade deals, the administration said it had also made progress on protecting American intellectual property and improving the access of technology companies to Chinese markets. China, which last December pledged to use only licensed software in government ministries and state-owned companies, has now agreed to audit and publish a list of those offices to measure their adherence to the policy.

The Chinese government will also modify new regulations on “indigenous innovation,” which American companies complain cut them out of lucrative markets. Beijing will drop a link between government procurement and Chinese companies, which would theoretically open these markets to American competitors.

President Obama personally lobbied Mr. Hu for concessions on these issues, the administration official said. The two presidents were meeting this morning with 18 American and Chinese chief executives at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

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Doug Mills/The New York Times President Obama after making a statement following his meeting with Congressional leaders on Tuesday.

President Obama and Republican Congressional leaders emerged from a high-profile, post-election meeting on Tuesday with gracious words and pledges of cooperation but no concrete agreements on the fiscal and national security issues that divide them.

The two sides agreed to conduct negotiations over the next few days in search of a compromise on whether to extend the Bush-era tax cuts that expire in a month. “There must be some sensible common ground,” Mr. Obama said. Yet the two sides yielded nothing in their disagreement over whether the cuts should be extended across the board as Republicans insist or exclude income over $250,000 as Mr. Obama wants.

The president assigned Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and his new White House budget director, Jacob Lew, to sit down with four lawmakers, one from each party and each chamber of Congress, to find a resolution to the tax dispute. Republicans made clear that settling the issue was the precursor to any other matters that Democrats want to raise in the lame-duck session of Congress now underway.

Both sides pronounced the White House meeting cordial and useful as they maneuvered for position in the new political environment since Republicans swept to victory in midterm elections, capturing the House and bolstering their numbers in the Senate. And they agreed that it was only the first of many to come, with at least one to be held at Camp David.

“I just want to say, I thought it was a productive meeting,” Mr. Obama said. “People came to it with a spirit of trying to work together, and I think it was a good start as we move forward.”

Both Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the incoming House speaker, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, used the word “frank” to describe the conversation.

The two Republican leaders said Mr. Obama told them during the private session that he regretted not reaching out to them more in his first two years in office. “I told the president I think spending more time will help us find some common ground,” Mr. Boehner said.

Still, both sides acknowledged that they had deep philosophical differences that would not necessarily be bridged by more camaraderie. “We had a very nice meeting today,” Mr. Boehner said. “Of course, we’ve had a lot of very nice meetings. The question is, Can we find common ground?”

Mr. McConnell pointed out that Americans had voted for divided government more often than not since World War II, but added, “There’s no particular reason we can’t find areas of agreement.”

Mr. McConnell urged Democrats to drop some of their priorities for the lame-duck session and focus on the tax issue and paying for government operations for the next 10 months. “I hope we can sort of reshuffle our priorities on the Senate side, get them in line with these two big issues and wrap up the 111th Congress,” he said.

But Mr. Obama pressed him to approve a new arms control treaty with Russia that has languished. Mr. McConnell did not rule it out, but said it would depend on how many other issues Democrats raise. Senate Democrats are pressing to repeal restrictions on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, extend unemployment insurance benefits set to expire on Tuesday, and allow some illegal immigrants who came to the country as children to earn residency through college or military service, all in the next few weeks.

The meeting was the first since the midterm elections, but did not go according to the original White House script. When Mr. Obama first announced his invitation to Congressional leaders of both parties shortly after the election, Republicans rebuffed the date he suggested, postponing it until Tuesday. Instead of a meeting to be followed by a dinner in the White House residence, it became a morning sit-down with no social component.

Mr. Boehner and Mr. McConnell laid down a marker even before arriving at the White House on Tuesday morning, making clear that they saw the election mandate differently than the president does. While he has interpreted the results as a voter mandate for bipartisanship, they see them as a rejection of Mr. Obama’s agenda.

“Republicans heard the voters loud and clear,” the two leaders wrote Tuesday in an op-ed in The Washington Post. “They want us to focus on preventing a tax hike on every taxpayer, reining in Washington spending and making it easier for employers to start hiring again.” They added that “voters did not signal they wanted more cooperation on the Democrats’ big-government policies that most Americans oppose.”

With tax and spending policy at the heart of their disagreements, Mr. Obama welcomed the Republicans to the White House a day after announcing a two-year pay freeze for civilian federal workers, embracing a priority some of the opposition had advanced before they could take office next year and enact it on their own.

The move will save $5 billion over two years, a fraction of the $1.3 trillion annual deficit. But the White House hoped it would send a signal that the president is serious about reining in deficit spending and serve as an opening bid in coming talks with Republicans about more substantial measures.

Tuesday’s meeting came as members of Mr. Obama’s bipartisan fiscal commission struggled to assemble a report by a Wednesday deadline on how to bring down federal spending to a more sustainable level. Among the options being discussed are politically volatile proposals to increase taxes and cut entitlement benefits.

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