Romney, Obama aim at swing voters on health care

JIM KUHNHENN

THOMAS BEAUMONT

Asso­ci­ated Press

BOSTON — With swing vot­ers in his sights, Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mitt Rom­ney is tack­ing toward the cen­ter on health care and defense spend­ing now that he’s put his final par­ti­san hur­dle behind him and the sprint to Nov. 6 is underway.

Rom­ney said in an inter­view that aired Sun­day that he would retain some pop­u­lar parts of the 2010 health care law he has pledged to repeal, say­ing the fea­tures he would keep are common-sense mea­sures in what he calls an oth­er­wise costly, inef­fi­cient plan.

The for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor also faulted con­gres­sional Repub­li­cans for going along with the White House on a bud­get deal that has set up auto­matic spend­ing cuts that include huge reduc­tions in defense spend­ing — a deal his run­ning mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, helped steer.

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama focused Florid­i­ans’ atten­tion on the Repub­li­can ticket’s stand on Medicare, an issue that’s been more favor­able to Democrats.

Romney’s cam­paign dis­missed the idea that the com­ments were a lurch toward the mid­dle now that the Repub­li­can con­ven­tion, the last par­ti­san event of the cam­paign, has passed, even as Rom­ney was vis­it­ing the most com­pet­i­tive states on the elec­tion map.

“I’m not get­ting rid of all of health care reform. Of course, there are a num­ber of things that I like in health care reform that I’m going to put in place,” Rom­ney told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an inter­view taped Fri­day and Sat­ur­day. He cited cov­er­age for peo­ple with med­ical con­di­tions and new insur­ance marketplaces.

Romney’s aides said that was con­sis­tent with his pre­vi­ous posi­tion that those who haven’t had a gap in cov­er­age shouldn’t be denied coverage.

But the com­ments brought renewed atten­tion to the sim­i­lar­i­ties between Obama’s plan and the one Rom­ney cham­pi­oned when he was Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor, which included pro­tec­tions for health con­di­tions and an indi­vid­ual man­date that the Repub­li­can has since railed against.

The GOP nom­i­nee, who attended church in Boston before debate prac­tice ses­sions Sun­day, didn’t offer specifics for how he’d deal with the afford­abil­ity of insur­ance, but sug­gested com­pe­ti­tion would help bring down costs. For seniors, Rom­ney has called for restruc­tur­ing Medicare by giv­ing retirees a gov­ern­ment pay­ment that they would use to choose between tra­di­tional Medicare and pri­vate insurance.

Rom­ney aides dis­missed the idea that the candidate’s com­ments about the defense cuts or health care were an effort to appear less par­ti­san with the race for unde­cided vot­ers now under way.

Spokesman Kevin Mad­den said Rom­ney was sharper in his crit­i­cism of Obama than he was of House Repub­li­cans on mil­i­tary cuts. Mad­den also said call­ing for the repeal of the 2010 health care law and sup­port­ing some of its pro­vi­sions are consistent.

“Repeal­ing Oba­macare is a focus because it costs too much and the taxes and reg­u­la­tions are hurt­ing small busi­ness. That’s com­mon sense,” Mad­den said. “Afford­abil­ity and porta­bil­ity of health care insur­ance aren’t par­ti­san issues.”

Obama, cam­paign for a sec­ond day in Florida, tried to move past a weak jobs report Fri­day and high­light the impact of Romney’s pro­pos­als on older work­ers and those near­ing retirement.

The pres­i­dent pro­moted a study show­ing that future retirees under Romney’s plan would pay tens of thou­sands of dol­lars more for health care over their retire­ment period. The report was rejected quickly by Romney’s cam­paign, which faulted Obama for rely­ing on “dis­cred­ited attacks” and noted the study was con­ducted by Obama’s for­mer adviser.

Obama told about 3,000 sup­port­ers in Mel­bourne, Fla., that if Rom­ney had his way, Amer­i­cans will pay more so insur­ers could make more. “No Amer­i­can should have to spend their golden years at the mercy of insur­ance com­pa­nies,” he said.

In Ohio, another crit­i­cal bat­tle­ground, Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden piled on, mock­ing Repub­li­cans for say­ing they want to pro­tect Medicare and claim­ing that under Romney’s lead­er­ship, ben­e­fits would be slashed.

Hop­ing to put a human face on the issue, Obama ate break­fast at a Florida cafe with two older cou­ples con­cerned about Medicare costs. But a brief inter­ac­tion with another patron and Rom­ney sup­porter under­scored what polls show is a per­sis­tent prob­lem for Obama with vot­ers who like him per­son­ally but ques­tion his eco­nomic competence.

“I always thought he was a very per­son­able per­son, nice per­son,” said 73-year-old Bill Ter­rell of Cocoa, Fla. “I just don’t think he’s doing a good job on the economy.”

In broad­cast inter­views, Rom­ney and Ryan kept the heat on Obama on the eco­nomic front, warn­ing that across-the-board spend­ing cuts set to take effect at the start of 2013 could dev­as­tate the defense bud­get. Half of the cuts are expected to come from the Pen­ta­gon if Con­gress doesn’t reach a bud­get solu­tion in the next few months.

But Romney’s attacks on the pres­i­dent for sign­ing the deficit-reduction mea­sure had some col­lat­eral dam­age for his run­ning mate, who as House Bud­get Com­mit­tee chair­man both voted for and loudly praised the bill that cre­ated the trig­ger for the auto­matic spend­ing cuts.

“I thought it was a mis­take on the part of the White House to pro­pose it,” Rom­ney said. “I think it was a mis­take for Repub­li­cans to go along with it.”

With an eye toward unde­cided vot­ers dis­mayed by the lack­lus­ter recov­ery, Rom­ney and Ryan faulted Obama for fail­ing to pro­vide the tax relief they say holds the key to the cre­ation of mil­lions of jobs. Rom­ney has pledged to lower tax rates for by 20 per­cent for all Amer­i­cans — includ­ing the wealthy.

Rom­ney has said he’ll pay for those cuts by elim­i­nat­ing loop­holes and deduc­tions for higher-income earn­ers. But both Repub­li­cans were unyield­ing in say­ing that the specifics would come only after the election.

“Mitt Rom­ney and I, based on our expe­ri­ence, think the best way to do this is to show the frame­work, show the out­lines of these plans, and then to work with Con­gress to do this,” Ryan said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Draw­ing atten­tion to his oppo­nents’ ret­i­cence, Obama shot back hours later, say­ing Ryan and Rom­ney deserve a fail­ing math grade instead of acco­lades for bold leadership.

“They need to stay after school. They need to get some extra study hall in there. No recess for you,” Obama said.

For Obama, Florida presents a con­ver­gence of issues. Even as Obama sought to touch a nerve on health care, Romney’s cam­paign was try­ing to stoke anti-Obama sen­ti­ments among the state’s numer­ous Jew­ish vot­ers and donors by draw­ing atten­tion to the flap at the Demo­c­ra­tic National Con­ven­tion over whether the party plat­form should define Jerusalem as the cap­i­tal of Israel.

White House press sec­re­tary Jay Car­ney sought to dis­tin­guish between what Obama has said is his per­sonal view — that Jerusalem is and should remain the cap­i­tal of Israel — and long­stand­ing U.S. for­eign pol­icy, which states that the sta­tus of Jerusalem should be part of final nego­ti­a­tions between Israelis and Palestinians.

Also on the minds of some Florida res­i­dents was the future of the U.S. space pro­gram. Greet­ing Obama as he arrived at his rally in Mel­bourne were a knot of pro­test­ers hold­ing anti-Obama signs, includ­ing one that read: “Obama lied. Space Coast died.”

Mel­bourne, home of the Kennedy Space Cen­ter and the Florida Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy, has been hard hit by cut­backs in the space pro­gram. Obama’s cam­paign cast blame on Pres­i­dent George W. Bush and House Repub­li­cans, while Obama said his pro­pos­als to put the U.S. on the cut­ting edge of space explo­ration would inspire the next generation.

Rom­ney, who took a break from the cam­paign trail dur­ing the Demo­c­ra­tic con­ven­tion last week, has returned to the most com­pet­i­tive states, with recent stops in Iowa, New Hamp­shire and Vir­ginia. A rally Mon­day in Mans­field, Ohio, will be fol­lowed by a Chicago fundraiser. On Tues­day, the 11th anniver­sary of the 9/11 attacks, Rom­ney plans to speak to a vet­er­ans group in Reno, Nev.

Posted by AP News on Sep 9 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.