Obama: Boehner has 'no new ideas'

PARMA, Ohio – President Barack Obama, fighting to preserve his party’s control of Congress, laid out his battle plan on Wednesday, drawing sharp distinctions between his vision to rebuild the nation’s economy — and the struggling middle class — and Republican economic policies, which he said triggered last year’s financial meltdown.

“A lot has changed since I came here in those final days of the last election, but what hasn’t is the choice facing this country,” said Obama, speaking at Cuyahoga Community College, just outside of Cleveland. “It’s still fear versus hope; the past versus the future. It’s still a choice between sliding backward and moving forward. That’s what this election is about. That’s the choice you’ll face in November.”


In a speech billed as a rebuttal to House Minority Leader John Boehner’s Republican economic policy speech last month, Boehner became Obama’s main target. Calling him out eight times in his 45-minute address, Obama clarified what he was for and what “Mr. Boehner” and the GOP is against, including ending tax cuts for the nation’s top earners and closing loopholes that allow corporations to avoid paying taxes.

In a blunt critique to Boehner’s economic policy speech in Cleveland last month, the president declared, “There were no new policies from Mr. Boehner. There were no new ideas.”

Following the president’s remarks, Boehner issued a statement calling on Obama to “[freeze] all tax rates, coupled with cutting federal spending to where it was before all the bailouts, government takeovers, and ‘stimulus’ spending sprees.”

Though he was in Boehner’s home state, Obama spoke to a friendly audience, which rose to its feet and applauded him several times. Once they booed Boehner, and a few in the crowd shouted “no” in response to Obama’s assertion that Republicans would let insurance companies go back to denying care and allow credit card companies go back to unfairly raising interest rates on their customers.

If Democrats want to beat back widely anticipated Republican gains in November, it will be because of voters in places like this. Obama fired up his base in Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County in 2008, picking up 60,000 new Democratic votes. He’ll need them again for the 2010 midterms.

Touting his own economic plans, Obama alluded to three new proposals to jolt the struggling economy: a $50 billion federal investment to overhaul the nation’s railroads, highways and runways; a big tax break for businesses that conduct research and experimentation; and tax write-offs for companies’ expenditures on hiring, equipment and expansion.

Those measures carry a $180 billion price tag; Obama was careful to avoid calling it an economic stimulus plan, given the current national mood against government spending and the massive national debt. Republicans have nevertheless hammered the president, comparing his plan to the $814 billion emergency spending package he pushed through Congress last year – a measure the GOP leadership has declared a failure.

With just weeks until the crucial mid-term elections, Congress has a very small window to take up new legislation, and an even smaller appetite for more government spending. It wasn’t a good sign for the White House when one of its allies, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) on Wednesday rejected Obama’s new initiative, declaring it a "second stimulus package.”

In Cleveland, the president hit Republicans for “moralizing” on the need to reduce the deficit and government spending. He pointed out that the GOP was in charge when the $127 billion surplus created by President Bill Clinton disappeared, and said his proposals address long-ignored problems that have held the nation back in a fast-paced, global marketplace.

“I refuse to cut back on those investments that will grow our economy in the future – investments in areas like education and clean energy and technology,” he said. “That’s because economic growth is the single best way to bring down the deficit – and we need these investments to grow.”

By contrast, the president said, congressional Republicans, led by Boehner, have linked arms to oppose virtually all of his ideas, even if those ideas had previously been part of the GOP platform – including a bipartisan commission to reduce the federal deficit. Republicans are also unified against infrastructure upgrade projects that would lead to hiring, and have stalled programs that would aid small businesses, Obama said.

“So that’s the choice, Ohio,” the president said. “Do we return to the same failed policies that ran our economy into a ditch, or do we keep moving forward with policies that are slowly pulling us out? Do we settle for a slow decline, or do we reach for an America with a growing economy and a thriving middle-class?”

In describing how the nation should work, the president told how his own family worked tirelessly to move up to the middle class. During World War II, he said, his grandfather fought in Europe while his grandmother worked in factories; In return, the government gave them a boost: his grandfather attended college on the GI Bill, and purchased a home through the Federal Housing Authority.

Obama said his mother put herself through college, knowing it would lead to a better life, while first lady Michelle Obama’s father, a Chicago municipal worker, still labored on his job long after multiple sclerosis had crippled him, knowing his family needed his income to advance out of the working class. Those values – hard work, sacrifice, keeping the future in mind – are what made the nation great, he said.

“It was an America where you didn’t buy things you couldn’t afford; where we didn’t just think about today – we thought about tomorrow,” he said. “An America that took pride in the goods it made, not just in the things it consumed. An America where a rising tide really did lift all boats, from the company CEO to the guy on the assembly line.”

To applause, Obama proclaimed: “That’s the America I believe in.”