President Obama blasts GOP budget as old ideas that hurt middle-income families
President Barack Obama criticized the House Republican budget proposal during a visit to Cleveland on Wednesday, mocking their fiscal plans as “a path to prosperity for those who have already prospered.”
Obama said the U.S. recovery from the depths of a recession when he first took office demonstrated that his critics were wrong and that Republican prescriptions for the economy don’t work. He said the House budget plan rehashes old ideas about cutting taxes for the wealthy while gutting his health care law and programs that benefit middle-income families.
“Reality has rendered its judgment,” Obama said. “Trickle-down economics does not work and middle-class economics does.”
The speech came after Obama unveiled almost $500 million public-private investment for a manufacturing hub that provides workforce training and technology development. He also toured a center in Cleveland where the federal government provides assistance to small manufacturers, including a local whiskey distillery.
The plan unveiled by House Republicans on Tuesday would cut $5.5 trillion in government spending and partially privatize Medicare. It would also include cuts to entitlement programs including Medicaid and repeal the health care law known as Obamacare. Its backers say that would result in a balanced budget within the next decade.
Senate Republicans produced their own version of the budget Wednesday, which would trim $5.1 trillion in spending and also seek to balance the budget within a decade.
Neither the Republican proposals nor the budget blueprint Obama sent to Congress earlier this year have any chance of becoming law. The White House has made clear it sees the documents as an opportunity to set out a clear message about each party’s priorities.
Without naming him, Obama chided 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for having promised to bring the unemployment rate down to 6 percent by 2016 – it’s 5.5 percent now. He also rebutted Boehner’s frequent question – “Where are the jobs?” – by citing the 12 million created during the recovery.
Aides say that by highlighting what budget cuts would mean to health care, manufacturing and education, the president can draw a favorable contrast to his congressional opposition. Obama will cast the Republican plans as driven by ideology and emblematic of a party that has been unable to govern since taking control of Congress earlier this year.