[AtLast]

Obama: Boehner has 'no new ideas'


http://www.politico.com/news/stories...#ixzz0zCMcVH7U


http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/41901.html


By KENDRA MARR | 9/8/10 4:14 PM EDT


PARMA, Ohio – President Barack Obama, fighting to preserve his party’s control of Congress, laid out his battle plan on Wednesday, drawing sharp distinctions between his vision to rebuild the nation’s economy — and the struggling middle class — and Republican economic policies, which he said triggered last year’s financial meltdown.

“A lot has changed since I came here in those final days of the last election, but what hasn’t is the choice facing this country,” said Obama, speaking at Cuyahoga Community College, just outside of Cleveland. “It’s still fear versus hope; the past versus the future. It’s still a choice between sliding backward and moving forward. That’s what this election is about. That’s the choice you’ll face in November.”

In a speech billed as a rebuttal to House Minority Leader John Boehner’s Republican economic policy speech last month, Boehner became Obama’s main target. Calling him out eight times in his 45-minute address, Obama clarified what he was for and what “Mr. Boehner” and the GOP is against, including ending tax cuts for the nation’s top earners and closing loopholes that allow corporations to avoid paying taxes.

In a blunt critique to Boehner’s economic policy speech in Cleveland last month, the president declared, “There were no new policies from Mr. Boehner. There were no new ideas.”

Following the president’s remarks, Boehner issued a statement calling on Obama to “[freeze] all tax rates, coupled with cutting federal spending to where it was before all the bailouts, government takeovers, and ‘stimulus’ spending sprees.”

Though he was in Boehner’s home state, Obama spoke to a friendly audience, which rose to its feet and applauded him several times. Once they booed Boehner, and a few in the crowd shouted “no” in response to Obama’s assertion that Republicans would let insurance companies go back to denying care and allow credit card companies go back to unfairly raising interest rates on their customers.

If Democrats want to beat back widely anticipated Republican gains in November, it will be because of voters in places like this. Obama fired up his base in Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County in 2008, picking up 60,000 new Democratic votes. He’ll need them again for the 2010 midterms.

Touting his own economic plans, Obama alluded to three new proposals to jolt the struggling economy: a $50 billion federal investment to overhaul the nation’s railroads, highways and runways; a big tax break for businesses that conduct research and experimentation; and tax write-offs for companies’ expenditures on hiring, equipment and expansion.

Those measures carry a $180 billion price tag; Obama was careful to avoid calling it an economic stimulus plan, given the current national mood against government spending and the massive national debt. Republicans have nevertheless hammered the president, comparing his plan to the $814 billion emergency spending package he pushed through Congress last year – a measure the GOP leadership has declared a failure.


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