President Barack Obama, seizing on Republican plans to slash deficits that the White House sees as a potent vote winner for Democrats in this year’s election, slammed his opponents on Tuesday to reinforce his claim that they favor the rich.
In a week in which Republican Mitt Romney is expected to extend his lead in the race for his party’s nomination to confront Obama in the November 6 election, the president took aim at their recent budget plans to cut spending and taxes.
“This congressional Republican budget … it’s a Trojan horse. Disguised as deficit reduction plan, it’s really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country,” Obama will say at a speech in Washington, according to excerpts of his remarks.
The budget proposal, passed by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives last week, would reduce the deficit by cutting spending while reforming the tax code, including lowering the top rate of tax to 25 percent from 35 percent.
They say it is an answer to Obama’s spending policies, which they blame for record U.S. deficits on his watch.
It has no chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate and becoming law in this Congress. But White House officials say the goal of the speech will be to hammer home a message that if Republicans win in November, their budget is coming to America.
Stepping up the campaign against Romney, one of the richest men to ever to seek the White House, Obama officials say the president will also make remarks on Friday at a conference on women in the economy.
This focuses on a vital voter demographic that looks to be swinging hard his way after a new poll on Monday showed Obama opening a large lead over Romney among women in key election swing states.
GENDER POLITICS
Senior Obama officials say they were not surprised by the poll’s findings after recent remarks about birth control by Republican candidates on the campaign trail, which they said sounded like an echo from the 1950s, and were a clear turn-off for many young U.S. women.
Romney has said he would end federal funding for the Planned Parenthood women’s health organization that provides abortion services and Rick Santorum, his chief rival for the Republican nomination, has called contraception morally wrong.
Romney hopes to all but wrap the race up this week by winning election contests in Wisconsin, Maryland and Washington D.C., pressuring Santorum to stand aside to unite the Republican party in the goal of defeating Obama in November.
Senior White House officials said the president would use the Tuesday speech, at an Associated Press luncheon, to press his priorities on taxes, the future of federally provided Medicare healthcare, and a defense of the middle class they hope will peel vital blue collar voters away from Republicans.
Officials told reporters at a Monday briefing that the goal of fairness in the tax system captured by Obama’s so-called Buffett Rule would be a core part of the message, ahead of a tax vote in the Senate later this month.
Named after billionaire Obama backer Warren Buffett, who complained last year that he payed a lower tax rate than his secretary, Obama says the Buffett Rule is a standard that should guide Congress as it seeks to tackle the U.S. deficit and debt.
The Republican budget plan caps discretionary spending on things like education and infrastructure and cuts spending on welfare programs for the poor including for food stamps and housing.
The blue print also proposes broad tax reform, including the closure of loopholes to raise revenue, while advocating a simplification in the tax code that would include lowering the top tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent.
Obama will call the budget proposal “thinly veiled Social Darwinism”, according to his prepared remarks.
“In this country, 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,” he will say.
The speech will be delivered at a Washington event at 12:30 p.m. (1630 GMT).
(Reporting by Alister Bull; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2012
4 thoughts on “Obama calls Republican tax-cut plans ‘a Trojan horse’”
In the above article at the end is quote by Obama presumably….“In this country, 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,”
And, that is true…in the book, “Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer–and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class”, two political scientists — Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson show how the middle class has been super-shafted since 1979…
From 1979 to 2006, the poorest 20% of American households had a 10% gain in average income even when government taxes and benefits and private employment-based benefits are figured in.
For middle-income households, average inflation-adjusted income rose 21% while they worked longer hours than before 1979.
What about the top 1%? They skyrocketed up nearly 260% in average after-tax income!
And the top 1/10 of the 1%, how did they do? Between 1979 and 2005, they flew up into the stratosphere and increased their average after-tax household income from $4 million to almost $24.3 million.
Since 1979, congressmen and senators (most of them Republicans) have cut tax rates for the wealthy, promoted deregulation and weakened oversight of financial markets, and established other economy-based policy changes.
All of the actions that they have taken and unstintingly maintained have given the highest income Americans incredible riches.
I would love to see the Ryan Budget analyzed by a real financial pro before it goes any further. The answer to this is in President Obama’s corner.
Could it be that he is waiting until after the 2012 election before he takes a strong stand at working for the development of jobs? Does he hope for a Democratic Congress? We can’t afford to wait for this.
I’ve always thought that capitalism thrived on new innovative minds developing new ways of doing things as well as developing those new things. We cannot do this without expanding the academics in our schools.
Right there is a working agenda to be built by the Democrats. The Republicans want Creation taught over all subjects and this is a potent argument that should be discussed. Science is the answer along with an extended space program for inspiration. Developing the young minds of the kids to think in terms of innovations is often missed by their own parents. Our families are generational television watchers and for any evolutionary adult this is a death knoll for the future of our species.
Where are the teachers who teach to the future? Without basic academics, our kids are doomed. Every single President who has been elected for two terms holds the 8 years of basic education for our children. The seeds of higher education are planted in those 8 years. President Bush 43 wasted those 8 years through testing instead of teaching. What can we expect from President Obama?
“Disguised as deficit reduction plan, it’s really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country,” Obama will say…
just another Alinsky type con… doublespeak… much like all of his rhetoric these days.
Anything for the dumbmasses…
Has Obama has done anything to maintain or grow the middle class?
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