President Obama attacked Republicans for their desire to cut the government spending that “made this country great,” while also faulting them for failing to “balance the budget.”

Obama said that Republicans have “one message and that is, we’re going to make sure that we cut people’s taxes even more — so that by every objective measure our deficit is worse and we will slash government investments that have made this country great,” he argued, “not because it’s going to balance the budget, but because it’s driven by our ideological vision about how government should be.  That’s their agenda, pure and simple.”