2010.09.14 Obama, in Rally Mode, Steps Up Jabs at G.O.P. (From NYT, By Jihwan Kim)

September 8, 2010

Obama, in Rally Mode, Steps Up Jabs at G.O.P.

By HELENE COOPER and JACKIE CALMES

CLEVELAND — Seeking to rally his struggling party for the final weeks of the midterm election, President Obama delivered his most partisan speech of the campaign so far on Wednesday, casting Democrats as fighters for the middle class and Republicans as protectors of "millionaires and billionaires" and special interests.

 

Mr. Obama called for letting the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy expire but making the rate cuts for the middle class permanent. And he suggested Republicans would hold "hostage" the extension of the middle-class rates to get the top rates extended as well.

 

Republican Congressional leaders fired back quickly that Democrats were proposing in effect to raise taxes. And they united around a proposal on Wednesday from Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, to cut domestic spending and freeze all tax rates for two years — drawing the battle lines for the campaign's final weeks.

 

Recalling a campaign visit to Cleveland in 2008, Mr. Obama said: "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. It's still fear versus hope, the past versus the future. It's still a choice between sliding backward and moving forward."

 

Mr. Obama chose to speak in the Cleveland suburb of Parma to underscore the contrast with Republicans since Mr. Boehner, who could become the House speaker if his party wins a majority, two weeks ago unveiled a Republican economic message for the election that hinged on extending the Bush-era tax rates.

 

At times in the president's speech, he seemed to be running against Mr. Boehner, naming him seven times during his indictment of the Republicans.

 

Mr. Obama had stepped up his attacks on Republicans over the summer. But in his speech here he went further.

 

"I realize in some cases there are genuine philosophical differences," Mr. Obama told a largely sympathetic crowd of around 3,000 at Cuyahoga Community College. But, citing his initiative for small-business tax cuts that Republicans have blocked in the Senate, he added, "They're making the same calculation they made just before my inauguration: If I fail, they win."

 

Mr. Obama's newest proposals to help the flagging recovery, like his earlier proposal for a small-business bill, include ideas that typically have strong Republican and business backing. The new proposals, which the administration had previewed in the days before his speech on Wednesday, would increase and make permanent a tax credit for businesses' research expenses, allow businesses to write off the full costs of equipment purchased through 2011, and provide $50 billion more for infrastructure construction projects.

 

The administration figures that if Republicans unite to oppose the proposals, as many expect, that will be further evidence of their determination to stymie Mr. Obama.

 

Mr. Obama differentiated between the Republican Party today and an earlier time when the party, he said, upheld "a noble Republican vision of what this country can be" and had statesmen like Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan who "didn't spend all their time playing games or scoring points" and "didn't always prey on people's fears."

 

The president acknowledged that "people are frustrated and angry and anxious about the future." But he said that returning to Republican governance would mean a return to the failed policies of tax cuts and minimal regulations that led to the financial crisis and the housing bubble and the worst recession since the Depression.

 

"There were no new policies from Mr. Boehner," Mr. Obama said. "There were no new ideas. There was just the same philosophy that we had already tried during the decade that they were in power — the same philosophy that led to this mess in the first place: Cut more taxes for millionaires and cut more rules for corporations."

 

Mr. Boehner got out ahead of Mr. Obama's speech. Appearing on ABC-TV's "Good Morning America," he said that extending the top Bush tax rates would benefit small businesses; Democrats argue that few small businesses pay taxes at the top rates.

 

And Mr. Boehner sought to appear conciliatory in suggesting a compromise that would extend all the tax rates for at least two years, though he said he remained dedicated to making them permanent, a move that would cost more than $3 trillion over the next 10 years.

 

Other Republican leaders, including the Senate minority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, quickly endorsed Mr. Boehner's call for a two-year compromise.

 

In effect they were seizing an opening from the president's former budget director, Peter R. Orszag. He wrote in The New York Times this week that while only the middle-class tax rates should continue, passing legislation given Republicans' opposition suggested a deal that retained all the tax rates for two years. Then, Mr. Orszag wrote, all of them should end to reduce future deficits.

 

Mr. Boehner, in a statement after Mr. Obama's speech, said, "If the president is serious about finally focusing on jobs, a good start would be taking the advice of his recently departed budget director and freezing all tax rates, coupled with cutting federal spending to where it was before all the bailouts, government takeovers and 'stimulus' spending sprees."

 

Even as Mr. Obama sought to unite his party around his political message and his policy agenda, there was evidence that endangered Democrats would go their own ways.

 

Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat of Colorado who is in a tough battle to keep his seat, said in a statement that he would not vote for additional stimulus spending and that new transportation initiatives could be paid for from money remaining in the nearly $800 billion recovery plan enacted last year.

 

"We must make hard choices to significantly reduce the deficit," Mr. Bennet said.

 

Mr. Obama, until this speech, had left it to his Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, to make the case this summer against extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. That raised doubts among Democrats in Congress about whether Mr. Obama was willing to lead the fight, or whether he might settle for a temporary extension of the top rates as some Democrats in tough races favored.

 

In recent days, Mr. Obama got assurances from Congressional leaders that most Democrats wanted to do battle and believed that the public was on their side on the issue.

 

Yet Republicans seem as certain of the potency of their position against raising any taxes now, especially given other poll findings that many voters have lost confidence in Mr. Obama's handling of the economy.

 

 

Helene Cooper reported from Cleveland, and Jackie Calmes from Washington. David M. Herszenhorn contributed reporting from Washington.