WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said House Republicans would reverse the U.S. economic recovery and increase the deficit, sounding a campaign theme before November elections that will determine whether Democrats retain control of Congress.
Obama, speaking in his weekly address on radio and the Internet, pounced on Republican opposition to funding clean-energy jobs, calls to repeal health-care overhaul legislation passed earlier this year and support for extending tax cuts for wealthy Americans without paying for them with spending reductions or tax increases.
“These are not new ideas,” Obama said. “They are the same policies that led us into this recession. They will take us backward at a time when we need to keep America moving forward.”
One-third of the Senate and all House seats are on the ballot in November. With thepresident’s party typically losing seats in the first midterm congressional elections, Republicans need to pick up of 40 seats in the House of Representatives and 10 in the Senate to regain the control they lost in 2006.
Obama’s radio speech followed his budget office’s forecast Friday that this year’s deficit will be a record $1.47 trillion. Last year’s shortfall, during the recession that began under President George W. Bush, was $1.41 trillion.
Under the Republicans’ 2001 tax-cut legislation, the reductions end next year. Obama has proposed extending them for families making less than $250,000 a year. Republicans want to extend them to everyone.
In the Republican response to Obama’s radio address, Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana said his party would oppose allowing any of the Bush tax cuts to expire.
“The American people know we can’t tax and spend and bail our way back to agrowing economy,” Pence said. “House Republicans opposed the Democrats’ failed stimulus bill, their national energy tax, their government takeover of health care, and House Republicans will oppose this tax increase with everything we’ve got.”
House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio took the unusual step of adding a second Republican response to Obama, saying the president was “resorting to partisan attacks, rather than working with Republicans to help the American people.”
“Washington Democrats’ policies have created uncertainty that has undermined our economy, shaken the confidence of the nation, and cost millions of American jobs,”Boehner said.
Obama, meanwhile, has touted his $862 billion economic-stimulus program, saying it has created or saved 3 million jobs.
The budget office said the unemployment rate was projected to average 9.7 percentthis year and 9 percent next year.
He also said he expected that the country would “harness the skills and ingenuity” to “reach a better day.”
Also Saturday, Obama made an election-season appeal to disgruntled liberal activists and bloggers, assuring them his administration is committed to their causes and urging them to help elect Democrats in November.
“Change hasn’t come fast enough for too many Americans. I know that,” Obama said in a surprise video appearance at the annual Netroots Nation convention.
He said the combat mission in Iraq would soon end, and that the administration is working to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for homosexuals and close the U.S. prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay.
“In ways large and small we’ve begun to deliver on the change you fought so hard for,” Obama said. “We can’t afford to slide backward.”
Front Section, Pages 4 on 07/25/2010