Obama Defends Policies With Attack on Republicans
Obama Says He Won’t Delay Immigration Overhaul
Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
President Barack Obama speaks during a town hall event in Racine, Wisconsin.
President Barack Obama speaks during a town hall event in Racine, Wisconsin. Photographer: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
President Barack Obama defended his economic policies and plans to rewrite the rules for Wall Street with an attack on Republicans, saying their ideas have been tried and failed.
“We know what their ideas are, we know where they led us,” Obama said at a town-hall event today in Racine, Wisconsin.
He called House Republican Leader John Boehner “out of touch” for saying the financial regulatory overhaul bill backed by the administration was like using a nuclear weapon to kill an ant. Boehner made the remark in an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review published June 29.
“He’s got to come here to Racine and ask people what they think” about the financial crisis, Obama said. “There may be those in Washington who want to maintain the status quo, but we want to move America forward.”
The economy, jobs and the deficit are likely to be the top issues in November elections that will decide control of Congress. Heading into the campaign season, the administration is confronted by public pessimism about the direction of the economy and resistance in Congress to Obama’s proposals to overhaul financial regulations and take additional measures to boost the economy.
Republicans Respond
Before the president left Washington, the Republican National Committee put out a press release saying Obama’s policies “have never managed to meet his promises.”
A spokesman for Boehner, Michael Steel, said Obama should focus on cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and “scrapping his job-killing agenda.”
“It’s clear Boehner was not minimizing the crisis America faced,” Steel said in an e-mailed statement. “He was pointing out that Washington Democrats have produced a bill that will actually kill more jobs and make the situation worse.”
Obama also brought up comments made by U.S. Representative Joe Barton, the top Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, who described the $20 billion fund to pay economic damages from the oil spill as a “shakedown” of BP Plc and apologized to the company.
“He actually called it ‘a tragedy,’” Obama said. “A tragedy is what the people of the Gulf are going through right now.”
Barton was rebuked by Boehner and other Republican leaders and later retracted his remarks.
Campaign Preview
Obama’s speech may be a preview the Democratic Party’s strategy for the congressional elections.
“The president’s view is that there are these important moments where there is clarity about how our view of the world contrasts with the Republican view of the world,” Bill Burton, deputy White House press secretary, told reporters.
As he has done for the past several months, Obama is using the days before release of the monthly government report on the nation’s unemployment rate to promote or propose initiatives on job creation or relief for out-of-work Americans.
Obama said government action to extend unemployment benefits and federal aid to states struggling to balance their budget are needed to assure the recovery stays on track. The economy is “headed in the right direction” even as many Americans still are grappling with unemployment and depressed housing prices, he said.
Unemployment Report
The Labor Department is likely to report on July 2 that unemployment rose to 9.8 percent in June from 9.7 percent in May, according to the median forecast of 50 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. Figures from ADP Employer Services showed today that companies in the U.S. added fewer workers in June than forecast.
Earlier this week, the Conference Board’s confidence index slumped to 52.9 this month from a revised 62.7 in May. The gauge was lower than all projections in a Bloomberg News survey of 71 economists.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index plunged 3.1 percent yesterday to its lowest level since Oct. 30, on concern over weakening growth in China and a slump in American consumer confidence. The index increased 0.2 percent to 1,043.78 at 10:05 a.m. in New York today to trim its quarterly decline to less than 11 percent.
After meeting yesterday with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke at the White House, Obama said the U.S. economy is strengthening even as it faces “headwinds” because of concerns about the European debt crisis.
To contact the reporters on this story: Catherine Dodge in Racine, Wisconsin, at cdodge1@bloomberg.net; Julianna Goldman in Washington at jgoldman6@bloomberg.net
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