Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich took on President Obama’s plan allowing young Americans to stay on their parents’ health insurance until age 26 during an appearance this morning on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley, saying they need jobs not dependency on their parents.
His remarks were particularly poignant considering that last month’s unemployment numbers for those under the age of 30 remained stuck at a non-seasonally adjusted 12.7 percent, according to Generation Opportunity.
Gingrich echoed Paul Ryan’s convention acceptance speech where he talked about a young person sitting in their room watching a graying poster of Obama fading away.
“The President wants you to feel grateful that you can stay on your parents until you’re 26,” Gingrich said. “We’d like for you to get a job, so you can go out on your own.
“The President wants you to feel grateful that he is extending your payments,” Gingrich continued. “We’d like you to actually have a job, so you can pay off your student loans.”
Beating Obama in November will come down to jobs, and he predicts that the President will continue the economic blame game between now and the election, suggesting that Romney would be worse.
“The country’s got to make a decision,” Gingrich said. “Do we really want to take four more years of the worst economy since the Great Depression, or do you want to shift to the Republicans and see if they can do a better job.”
Asked by Crowley about the comparisons between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Gingrich said Clinton unlike Obama learned from the mistakes he made in 1994 and went on to victory in 1996.
“I actually thought that parts of the Clinton speech were eerily anti-Obama if you just listen to the subtext,” Gingrich said. “Here’s Clinton saying, ‘I reformed welfare because I worked with Republicans; you didn’t Mr. Obama.’
“He didn’t say it that way, but think about it, ‘I had the longest period of economic growth in history; you didn’t Mr. Obama. I got to four balanced budgets by working with Republicans; you didn’t Mr. Obama,’” Gingrich continued. “You can take his speech and not spin it very much to say that Obama learned nothing, and Bob Woodward’s new book indicates he learned nothing out of the 2010 election.”
Gingrich mocked Obama post-convention bounce in the poll, saying that 80 percent of it belongs to Bill Clinton.
“Bill Clinton is a very popular figure for a very practical reason; the economy worked,” Gingrich said.”We had jobs. We reduced children in poverty by 25 percent through welfare reform, and we actually balanced the budget for four years.”
The Clinton-Obama comparison shrinks the current occupant of the White House, Gingrich said while calling Clinton a “real President” and Obama a “pretender.”
