Obama denounces ‘radical’ Republican budget plan

KEN THOMAS

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — In an election-year pitch to middle-class vot­ers, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama is denounc­ing a House Repub­li­can bud­get plan as a “Tro­jan horse,” warn­ing that it rep­re­sents “an attempt to impose a rad­i­cal vision on our coun­try” that would hurt the pock­et­books of work­ing families.

Obama, in a speech to news­pa­per exec­u­tives, is sharply crit­i­ciz­ing a $3.5 tril­lion bud­get pro­posal pushed by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., which passed on a near-party-line vote last week and has been embraced by GOP pres­i­den­tial hope­fuls. The plan has faced fierce resis­tance from Democ­rats, who say it would gut Medicare, slash taxes for the wealthy and lead to deep cuts to cru­cial pro­grams such as aid to col­lege stu­dents and high­way and rail projects.

“It’s a Tro­jan horse. Dis­guised as deficit reduc­tion plan, it’s really an attempt to impose a rad­i­cal vision on our coun­try,” Obama said in excerpts of his speech released Tues­day. “It’s noth­ing but thinly veiled social Darwinism.”

Obama’s mes­sage comes as Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney looked to solid­ify his grip on his party’s pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion in pri­mary con­tests in Wis­con­sin, Mary­land and Wash­ing­ton, D.C. The White House has appeared increas­ingly focused on Rom­ney, with Obama’s cam­paign crit­i­ciz­ing the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor by name in an energy ad as the president’s team seeks to frame the elec­tion as a ref­er­en­dum on the eco­nomic secu­rity of middle-class voters.

White House advis­ers billed the speech — to be deliv­ered dur­ing The Asso­ci­ated Press lun­cheon of edi­tors and pub­lish­ers — as an impor­tant marker for the pres­i­dent as he seeks re-election. Senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials said the address would build upon themes the pres­i­dent deliv­ered in Kansas last fall, in which he called the nation’s eco­nomic chal­lenges a “make-or-break moment” for the mid­dle class, and in his State of the Union address, in which he laid out his election-year agenda.

Ryan’s pro­posal aims to slash the deficit and the size of gov­ern­ment while offer­ing sharply lower tax rates in return for elim­i­nat­ing many pop­u­lar tax breaks. GOP front-runner Mitt Rom­ney and his Repub­li­can rivals have said they would sup­port Ryan’s bud­get plan, which has lit­tle chance of pass­ing the Democratic-controlled Sen­ate but lays out the GOP’s fis­cal priorities.

Obama was mak­ing the case that who­ever wins the White House will face an econ­omy still recov­er­ing from the “worst eco­nomic calamity since the Great Depres­sion” and many Amer­i­cans will still be look­ing for jobs and lack­ing finan­cial secu­rity. By next year, “a debt that has grown over the last decade, pri­mar­ily as a result of two wars, two mas­sive tax cuts and an unprece­dented finan­cial cri­sis, will have to be paid down,” Obama says in the pre­pared remarks.

He argues that Ryan’s bud­get plan would stall the eco­nomic recov­ery. “By gut­ting the very things we need to grow an econ­omy that’s built to last — edu­ca­tion and train­ing, research and devel­op­ment — it’s a pre­scrip­tion for decline,” he says.

On taxes, Obama is also expected to call for eco­nomic fair­ness encap­su­lated by the so-called “Buf­fett Rule,” argu­ing that the wealthy shouldn’t pay a smaller share of their income in fed­eral taxes than middle-class tax­pay­ers. Many wealthy tax­pay­ers earn invest­ment income, which is taxed at 15 per­cent, and Obama has pro­posed that peo­ple earn­ing at least $1 mil­lion annu­ally — whether in salary or invest­ments — should pay at least 30 per­cent of their income in taxes.

Obama planned to note that “broad-based pros­per­ity has never trickled-down from the suc­cess of a wealthy few. It has always come from the suc­cess of a strong and grow­ing mid­dle class.”

The focus on tax reform has brought atten­tion to the effec­tive tax rate of Rom­ney, a mil­lion­aire who is pay­ing 15.4 per­cent in fed­eral taxes for 2011 on income mostly derived from invest­ments. The top nom­i­nal rate for tax­pay­ers with high incomes derived from wages, not includ­ing invest­ments, is 35 percent.

In advance of Obama’s speech, polit­i­cal adviser David Axel­rod charged that Rom­ney is “just in a time warp,” say­ing the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor “seems to look at the world through the rear-view mir­ror.” He said Rom­ney sub­scribes to a Cold War-era belief that Rus­sia is America’s great­est foe in the world and would return the coun­try to out­moded eco­nomic poli­cies that led to the near eco­nomic melt­down in the fall of 2008.

“I think he must watch Mad­men and think it’s the evening news,” Axel­rod said in an appear­ance on “CBS This Morn­ing.” He said that Rom­ney “wants to go back to the same poli­cies that got us into this disaster.”

Obama was speak­ing at a lun­cheon of 900 edi­tors and pub­lish­ers fol­low­ing The Asso­ci­ated Press’ annual meet­ing. William Dean Sin­gle­ton, out­go­ing chair­man of the AP Board of Direc­tors and chair­man of Medi­aNews Group Inc., will pose ques­tions to Obama fol­low­ing the president’s remarks.

Posted by AP News on Apr 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.