WASHINGTON — The day after his clean sweep of Tuesday’s three Republican primaries, Mitt Romney attacked President Obama for a “hide-and-seek campaign” that disguises his real intentions on the budget, foreign policy, energy and other policy touchstones. Mr. Romney said it “calls his candor into serious question.”
A one-stop destination for the latest political news — from The Times and other top sources. Plus opinion, polls, campaign data and video.
Appearing before a group of journalists that had hosted the president on Tuesday, Mr. Romney began by recalling Mr. Obama’s recent comment to Russia’s leader, in a moment picked up by a live microphone, that his flexibility on foreign policy would increase after the election. Mr. Romney asked on what other issues Mr. Obama would disclose his plans only after re-election.
“He wants us to re-elect him so we can find out what he will do,” Mr. Romney said.
“His intent is on hiding,” he said. “You and I are going to have to do the seeking.”
He said there was no better example than on the question of federal spending, especially on Medicare and other entitlement programs, in which he said Mr. Obama had never offered a detailed plan that could pass Congress. “He has failed to enact or even propose a serious plan to solve the entitlement crisis,” he said.
Mr. Romney spoke before a gathering of newspaper editors and reporters in Washington, where Mr. Obama the previous day castigated him for supporting a budget plan approved last week by House Republicans that promises to be a dividing line between the two parties for the rest of the campaign.
Asked for his response to Mr. Obama’s speech, Mr. Romney said Republicans were “intent on preserving the vitality and dynamism of the American spirit.”
He said Mr. Obama’s remarks were full of “distortions and inaccuracies” too numerous to list. And as he did in his speech, he defended the House spending plan, saying Mr. Obama had relied on “straw men” to criticize its spending cuts. “You wouldn’t cut programs on a proportional basis — there are some programs you would eliminated outright,” he said — like the health care overhaul, which he said would save $100 billion a year.
Mr. Romney said Mr. Obama’s overhaul, which includes savings in the Medicare program, would destroy it.
The budget plan, developed by Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, passed the House without a single Democratic vote and the approval of all but 10 Republicans. The Senate’s majority Democrats do not intend to pass any budget, relying instead on the outlines of last summer’s debt deal between Congress and the White House.
If the budget plan were ever to become law, Congressional committees would have to cut spending over the next 10 years by a total of $5.3 trillion below what Mr. Obama seeks.
It also would order House committees to draft cuts in projected deficits worth $261 billion in order to head off automatic cuts to the military that would otherwise take place next year in the absence of a broad deficit reduction plan, which Congress was unable to agree upon last year.
Politically, the Ryan approach would require making some unpopular choices in an election year. The Republican argument, which Mr. Romney echoes, is that the alternative is an irresponsible bleeding of the nation’s already debt-laden balance sheet.
The Ryan plan seeks to rein in debt largely through changes in entitlement and discretionary spending rather than through increases in tax rates, which it would reduce while eliminating many tax loopholes.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, under this plan revenues would rise from 15.5 percent of G.D.P. in 2011 to 19 percent in 2030, while spending on Medicare would rise from 3.25 percent to 4.25 percent, and Social Security from 4.75 percent to 6 percent. Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program would drop from 2 percent to 1.25 percent over the two decades.
But the cuts in other spending programs would be much steeper — from more than 12 percent to less than 6 percent of G.D.P., and even less another 20 years into the future.
The alternative, the plan’s supporters argue, is a future in which the economy is saddled with so much debt as to be unsustainable.
Mr. Romney said: “The new normal the president would have us embrace is trillion-dollar deficits and 8 percent unemployment.”
As he has frequently done, Mr. Romney said Mr. Obama’s economic platform has been an “antibusiness, anti-investment, antijobs agenda.” |
