President Obama and top Democrats are portraying Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney as an enemy of the middle class and seniors because Romney supports a Republican budget proposal that would drastically slash Medicare and other federal programs for the poor.
Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., chairman of the House Budget Committee, unveiled a budget proposal this week that would drastically reduce federal spending and further cut taxes, including those paid by the richest Americans, to reduce the federal deficit. Within 24 hours, though, Democrats were using Ryan’s proposal — and Romney’s support for it — as evidence that Republicans are a party that favors the rich.
“The Romney and Ryan budgets would turn Medicare into a voucher program, increase health care costs to seniors by thousands of dollars and make arbitrary cuts to programs essential to middle-class families like education and clean energy,” said Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt.
Repeatedly referring to Ryan’s proposal as the “Ryan-Romney” plan, LaBolt said the measure would award “massive tax cuts to the wealthiest and [protect] taxpayer subsidies to oil companies and hedge fund managers.”
House Republicans say Ryan’s budget proposal would cut spending by $5.3 trillion over the next decade, partially through major cuts to entitlement programs including Medicare and Medicaid. The plan would lower corporate and individual tax rates, preserve defense spending and, as LaBolt noted, maintain billions in tax cuts for oil and gas companies.
“We think it’s being honest with people,” Ryan said of his plan.
At a campaign event in Chicago, Romney called the Ryan plan “bold and exciting” and “very much consistent” with his own economic proposals.
“I applaud it,” Romney said. “It’s an excellent piece of work and very much needed.”
Democratic House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer characterized Romney’s support for the Ryan plan as a political appeal to the “narrow Tea Party base of the Republican party.”
“He’s turned his back on moderates” to win the Republican primary, Hoyer said in a call with reporters ahead of Romney’s planned campaign stop in Maryland on Wednesday.
“It’s important to note that the Romney-Ryan budget — and that’s what we’re going to call it; he’s embraced it, this is his plan — would again put us on a fiscally irresponsible path,” Hoyer said.
As chairman of the House Budget Committee, Ryan is a rising star within the Republican Party. GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich demonstrated the danger of breaking with Ryan and congressional Republicans when he criticized an earlier, but similar, budget proposal from Ryan as “right-wing social engineering.” Gingrich was eventually forced to publicly apologize for his comments.
Obama campaign officials and Democrats consider the Ryan plan a gift from Republicans, helping them to make the case that the GOP is beholden to wealthy interests at the expense of lower-income families.
Changes in the federal income tax rates that Ryan proposed would mostly benefit individuals making more than $200,000, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
“When compared to the priorities of the president and Democrats, the Romney-Ryan budget stands in stark contrast and demonstrates where each party’s priorities lie,” Hoyer said. “And that is what this election is all about — who is on the side of working people and the middle class.”
