Obama Takes Aim at Republicans
SEPTEMBER 8, 2010, 3:54 P.M. ET.
By JONATHAN WEISMAN
online.wsj.com
President Barack Obama, in a combative, campaign-like speech in Parma, Ohio, conceded that his policies have "fed the perception that Washington is still ignoring the middle class," even as he castigated Republican opponents for "riding…fear and anger all the way to Election Day."
The speech, at Cuyahoga Community College, was billed as a major economic address to unveil a new round of proposals to kick-start a flagging economic recovery. The president did introduce three new policy proposals the White House has been rolling out for nearly a week: $50 billion in additional infrastructure spending, a permanent and expanded research and experimentation tax credit and a measure allowing businesses to write 100% of their investment costs off their taxes through 2011.
But Mr. Obama's speech was far more about politics than economics.
"If we're willing again to choose hope over fear, to choose the future over the past, to come together once more around the great project of national renewal, then we will restore our economy, rebuild our middle class and reclaim the American dream for the next generation," he said, striking the same cadences that buoyed his presidential bid.
He fell back on campaign themes that propelled his 2008 surge: his grandfather's World War II fight, his father-in-law's struggle to work with multiple sclerosis and his work "in the shadow of a shuttered steel plant on the South Side of Chicago."
In a way he never has, the president singled out House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R., Ohio) repeatedly and by name, castigating him for proposing "the same [economic] philosophy that led to this mess in the first place. And he hit Republicans hard for opposing the administration's economic policies.
"Instead of coming together like past generations did to build a better country for our children and grandchildren, their argument is that we should let insurance companies go back to denying care to folks that are sick, and let credit-card companies go back to raising rates without any reason. Instead of setting our sights higher, they're asking us to settle for a status quo of stagnant growth, eroding competitiveness and a shrinking middle class," Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Boehner countered with a proposal that he said should garner bipartisan support: Extend all of the tax cuts passed under George W. Bush for two years and cut spending on programs not tied to national security to 2008 levels.
"If we're able to do this together, I think we'll show the American people that we understand what's going on in the country, and we'll be able to get our economy moving again and get jobs growing in America," Mr. Boehner said on ABC's Good Morning America.
The president's speech and a White House news conference on Friday will cap more than a week of headline-grabbing economic efforts at the White House. Administration officials say Mr. Obama has regained the initiative and has muted criticism even in his own party that he is not sufficiently focused on a job market stuck at 9.6% unemployment.
The policy proposals, thus far, have gained little traction. Sen. Michael Bennet (D., Colo.), who is locked in a difficult election fight, said Wednesday, "I will not support additional spending in a second stimulus package." Such spending should come out of still-unused funds from last year's stimulus law.
Democrats have expressed some disappointment in the president's choice of proposals. In a speech Tuesday, Rep. Joe Sestak, the Democratic candidate for Pennsylvania's open Senate seat, said he welcomed Mr. Obama's proposals, although he added they should have come 18 months ago.
"Why now? We're doing it for the polls, we should be doing it because it's the right thing to do," he said in a speech on the economy at Carnegie Mellon University.
But Mr. Sestak's top priority, a 15% payroll tax credit for small businesses, was rejected by the White House, as was a proposed payroll tax holiday for new hires that Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, another embattled Democrat, pressed on White House economist Larry Summers last Friday, according to a person familiar with the conversation.
"The rollout has not been good," said a Democratic congressional campaign aide, who noted there was little coordination between the White House and congressional leaders.
But, the aide added, Mr. Obama's combative tone—both Wednesday and at a Labor Day picnic Monday—has been helpful for Democrats, who are trying to turn the November midterms from a referendum on Democratic control in Washington to a choice between Democratic and Republican policy prescriptions.
For their part, Republicans were not dodging the charge that their responses to the president's proposals have been a constant and resounding "no."
Asked why Republicans should win in November, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a potential rival to Mr. Obama in 2012, said Republicans "in a very unified fashion have opposed bad policy. And the public appreciates it when a party fights against what it knows is bad policy." |
