* Obama calls Republican budget a “Trojan horse”
* Says plan will end Medicare “as we know it”
By Alister Bull
WASHINGTON, April 3 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama
accused Republicans on Tuesday of favoring the rich with a
budget plan that focuses on cutting popular programs, which the
White House sees as a potent vote winner for Democrats in this
year’s election.
In a week in which Mitt Romney is expected to extend his
lead in the race for the Republican nomination to confront Obama
in the Nov. 6 election, Obama took aim at their new budget
blueprint, calling it a “prescription for decline.”
“The Republicans running Congress right now have doubled
down and proposed a budget so far to the right it makes the
Contract with America look like the New Deal,” Obama said,
comparing a 1994 Republican manifesto with the social programs
of Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s.
In a rare name-check of the Republican front-runner, Obama
also noted in a speech that “one of my potential opponents,
Governor Romney,” had voiced hope he could sign a similar budget
into law on day one of his presidency, if he won in November.
“He even called it marvelous, which is a word you don’t
often hear when it comes to describing a budget,” said Obama,
who laid out a laundry list of programs he warned would be
savaged by Republican cuts, from education to healthcare.
“It is a bad idea and it will ultimately end Medicare as we
know it,” Obama said of the federal healthcare plan for the
elderly.
The partisan budget proposal, passed by Republicans in the
U.S. House of Representatives last week, would reduce deficits
by cutting spending while reforming the tax code. It would lower
the top tax rates on individuals and corporations to 25 percent
from the current 35 percent.
Republicans contend it is an answer to Obama’s spending
policies, which they blame for record budget deficits on his
watch.
The Republican budget proposal has no chance of passing the
Democratic-controlled Senate. But White House officials said the
goal of Obama’s speech was 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 ever to seek the White House, Obama officials said the
president will speak again on Friday at a conference on women in
the economy.
Obama is expected again to criticize Republican plans for
the economy. His remarks will come on the same day the
government is due to release its latest employment estimates.
Private forecasters polled by Reuters estimate payrolls
expanded by 203,000 in March.
GENDER POLITICS
A poll on Monday showed Obama was opening a large lead over
Romney among women voters in key election swing states.
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 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. He wants to pressure Santorum to stand aside and unite the
Republican party with the goal of defeating Obama in November.
Pressing his priorities on raising taxes on the wealthy,
protecting Medicare and defending the middle class, which he
hopes will peel away blue collar voters from the Republicans,
Obama said the House-passed budget would fundamentally change
America, and not in a good way.
“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,” he said. “It
is a prescription for decline.”
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 Republican blueprint also proposes broad tax reform,
including closing loopholes to raise revenue, while advocating a
simplification in the tax code and lowering the top tax rate.
“This is now the party’s governing platform. This is what
they are running on,” Obama said. “I am not exaggerating. These
are facts.”
