April 3, 2012

Obama Calls G.O.P. Budget Plan ‘Social Darwinism’

By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — President Obama opened a full-frontal assault Tuesday on the budget adopted by House Republicans, condemning it as a “Trojan horse” and “thinly veiled social Darwinism” that would greatly deepen inequality in the country.

Mr. Obama’s attack, in a speech during a lunch with editors and reporters from The Associated Press, was part of a broader indictment of the Republican economic blueprint for the nation. The Republican budget, and the philosophy it represents, he said in remarks prepared for delivery, is “antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everyone who’s willing to work for it.”

With Republicans beginning to coalesce around Mitt Romney as the party’s likely presidential nominee, Mr. Obama is sharpening his political message for the election — one that draws a stark contrast between his and Mr. Romney’s visions for the country, and flatly rejects the Reagan-era mantra of trickle-down prosperity.

In the latest of a series of combative speeches, the president said Americans could not afford to elect a Republican president at a time of fragile economic recovery, with a weak job market and a crushing national debt from “two wars, two massive tax cuts and an unprecedented financial crisis.”

The widening gulf between the rich and everyone else, Mr. Obama said, was hobbling the country’s economic growth. He cited studies that found that societies with less income inequality had stronger and steadier growth.

“In this country, broad-based prosperity has never trickled down from the success of a wealthy few,” the president said, according to excerpts of his address. “It has always come from the success of a strong and growing middle class. That’s how a generation who went to college on the G.I. Bill, including my grandfather, helped build the most prosperous economy the world has ever known.”

Many of Mr. Obama’s themes echoed his State of the Union address in January and his speech in Osawatomie, Kan., last December, where he invoked a Republican predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, who he said combined a fervent belief in the free market with a resolve to protect people from its worst predations.

But the president reserved his harshest words for the 2013 budget proposal recently passed by the Republican-controlled House. The budget, drafted by Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, calls for $5.3 trillion in spending cuts, as well as tax cuts for households earning more than $250,000.

“Disguised as a deficit reduction plan, it’s really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It’s nothing but thinly veiled social Darwinism,” Mr. Obama said. “By gutting the very things we need to grow an economy that’s built to last — education and training, research and development — it’s a prescription for decline.”