Angry congressional Republicans Wednesday slammed President Obama as “weird,” “irrelevant,” and full of false promises after he came out swinging at the GOP in a speech denouncing their plan to cut the deficit. And the GOP declared as dead on arrival Obama’s proposal to partially close the $1.3 trillion deficit by raising taxes.
“He’s irrelevant right now,” said freshman Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill. “It’s like the train has passed him by.”
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Obama on Wednesday joined the debate over the deficit with a proposal intended to counter a House GOP plan authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis. The GOP plan would cut the deficit by $6 trillion over 10 years through spending cuts and a revamping of Medicare and Medicaid, which would include raising the retirement age and shrinking benefits.
Obama’s plan would cut the deficit by $4 trillion over 12 years through spending cuts, including reductions in defense spending, and by increasing taxes on the richest Americans. It’s a change from Obama’s $3.73 trillion 2012 budget proposal released in February, which did not include those cost-cutting measures.
Obama said his plan is “a more balanced approach” than the GOP blueprint, which he labeled “deeply pessimistic” and which he said would heap the nation’s financial burden onto lower-income earners.
“He’s asking for a do-over,” Walsh told a small group of reporters after the speech. “Why do you let him get away with that?”
Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., a staunch fiscal conservative, said he liked Obama’s explanation of the nation’s budget woes, “But then it went weird. We got this problem which he explained very articulately and then he basically said, ‘I’m not going to do anything about it.’ ”
House Republican Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, was invited by the president to watch him deliver the speech at George Washington University. Upon returning to the Capitol, Hensarling said Obama’s remarks “set a new standard for class warfare rhetoric.” He added, “I missed lunch for this?”
Ryan, who was also invited, said he was disappointed.
“What we heard was not fiscal leadership from our commander in chief,” Ryan said. “What we heard was a political broadside from our campaigner in chief. Rather than building bridges, he’s poisoning wells.”
The House will vote on Ryan’s budget proposal on Friday and it is expected to pass easily, thanks to the GOP’s 24-seat majority.
But it likely will not pass the Senate, where Democrats are in charge. Parts of it could be implemented, however, as part of a deal to get Republicans to vote to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, which will hit its limit by July.
The biggest point of contention between Obama’s speech and the GOP plan are tax increases. Republicans want none, saying they stunt economic growth. But Obama pledged to do away with the tax cuts for upper-income earners that he agreed to extend in December but are set to expire in 2012.
“Spending is the problem,” Hensarling said. “Therefore tax increases are a nonstarter.”
