In his first campaign speech of the election year, President Obama defended big government and condemned Republicans’ “brand of you’re-on-your-own economics.”
“We can’t go back to this brand of you’re-on-your-own economics,” he said to a crowd of roughly 700 at the Capital Hilton. Tickets to the fundraising event cost $100.
“We are not a country that was built on the idea of survival of the fittest,” Obama said, invoking populist undertones. “We were built on the idea that we survive as a nation. We thrive when we work together, all of us.”
Lumping together Republicans in congress and those on the presidential campaign trail, Obama said, “they think the best way for America to compete for new jobs and businesses is to follow other countries in a race to the bottom.”
Republicans want to demolish Medicare, cut education funding, roll back the minimum wage and dismantle workers’ unions, he said.
Obama’s remarks come on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, as six Republican presidential candidates crisscross the state criticizing his vision of governance as socialist and un-American.
Obama’s copious use of federal welfare programs to stimulate the economy is “replacing our merit-based society with an entitlement society,” says former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. In Obama’s entitlement society, a European-style welfare state redistributes wealth and creates equal outcomes regardless of individual effort, he says.
Meanwhile, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has taken to calling Obama a “food-stamp president” who is more invested in protecting welfare programs than creating jobs.
Back in Washington, Obama said it’s the Republican candidates who are running against American ideals.
“We believe we’ve got a stake in each other’s success,” he said. “That same common purpose, that still exists today. Maybe it doesn’t exist here in Washington and maybe not on the presidential debate stage up in New Hampshire. But out in America, it’s there.”
