Chicago – President Barack Obama is meeting with his campaign team in Chicago a few hours after likely Republican rival Mitt Romney named his running mate – Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
Obama headed to his downtown Chicago campaign headquarters shortly after arriving in his hometown in Saturday.
The president is holding a series of fundraisers on Sunday related to his 51st birthday, including one at his South Side home.
Aides said Obama was attending his weekly campaign meeting in Chicago with top advisers.
Democrats pounced on Mitt Romney’s selection of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate Saturday, saying the pick showed a commitment to “budget-busting tax cuts” for the wealthy and greater burdens on the middle class and seniors.
President Barack Obama’s campaign team said Romney’s choice made clear that the former Massachusetts governor would be forced to adhere to the principles laid out in the House Republican budget – authored by Ryan – which they said would undermine entitlement programs crucial to middle-class families and seniors. Democrats said privately that the choice of Ryan could help Obama in states with large numbers of elderly voters, such as Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, said in a statement that Romney had “chosen a leader of the House Republicans who shares his commitment to the flawed theory that new budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy, while placing greater burdens on the middle class and seniors, will somehow deliver a stronger economy.”
Previewing the campaign’s line of attack, Messina called Ryan the “architect of the radical Republican House budget” and said it would “end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system, shifting thousands of dollars in health care costs to seniors.” Ryan was chief author of a House-backed budget plan that would curb overall entitlement spending and convert Medicare into a voucher-like system in which future seniors would receive subsidies to purchase health insurance on the open market.
Less than two hours after Romney introduced Ryan as his running mate, the Obama campaign released a 90-second Web video showing footage of the men appearing together. The ad calls Ryan the “mastermind behind the extreme GOP budget plan” and includes an audio clip of Romney saying earlier this year that it would be “marvelous” if the Senate were to adopt the Ryan budget. The ad ends with this tagline: “Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan: Back to the failed top-down policies that crashed our economy.”
Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida said Ryan had laid the groundwork in Congress for Romney’s budget plan, which she said gives tax cuts to millionaires while punishing middle-class families. She said Romney and Ryan would repeat mistakes of former President George W. Bush.
“A Romney-Ryan ticket is sure to take us back and repeat the same catastrophic mistakes that got us into the mess we found ourselves in in the first place,” Wasserman Schultz said in a statement.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has blasted Romney for failing to release additional years of his tax returns, said in a statement that by picking Ryan, Romney “has doubled down on his commitment to gut Social Security and end Medicare as we know it.”
Romney’s choice “demonstrates that catering to the tea party and the far-right is more important to him that standing up for the middle class,” said Reid, D-Nev.
Obama was traveling to Chicago on Saturday but had no public events planned. He was holding birthday-related fundraisers on Sunday in Chicago, including one at his South Side home, and then taking a three-day swing through Iowa, the state that launched his presidential bid in 2008.
And obummer is not punishing the middle class now? His health care plan and many other “reforms” are causing the middle class to shrink into unemployment and underemployment. A vote for the O man in November is the death nell for the American we know and love. He promised us change – and he made good on it. Change is what most of us have left in our pockets! Let’s not make this mistake again.
Obama and his like are living in a dream world; they had 4 years to “fix” the Bush era “mistakes” and have just made things worse. I don’t know if these guys are any better just know that Obama and his chevrah failed.
First of all, please be a grown up and use the President’s correct name. Secondly,
his ACA just kept 2.5 million young people ages 22-26 on their parents health insurance policies. Seems to me that helps the middle class plenty.
I agree with #6 . We saved money for our kids also. Health ins. is expensive enough. To be able to save a little is a blessing. Now we have to start worrying about Medicare and its co-insurance. What are they not going to give and what are they going to do to the elderly? It’s about time somebody started caring!! Ryan may want to save money because he has money to pay for dr. bills. What about the average little old lady who does not have the extra few thousand $$$ in the bank like Mr. Ryan? She is going to DIE without Medicare! He does not care! Wait for the bodies to start piling up! You people think Canada is bad! This Country has a lot to learn from the EU and other advanced Countries!! We are way behind!! At this rate we are going backwards, not forwards!!
Every legislation has parts that are beneficial and parts that are pure garbage (political fleshpots to keep errant ne’er do wells in office). This is a 236 year old legacy and it’s why we’ve had it so good for 12 generations. The system works. It may not please all and it wasn’t designed to do so.
Obama Team: Romney, Ryan Would Hurt Middle Class
And Team Obama is hurting ALL Classes! Why is there such a need for OblameO to turn this into class warfare? Oh, I forgot, that’s all his life experience has been.
In about 85 days we tell him to pack his bags by Jan 20. In this case, its too bad we don’t do it like they do in the UK so we could have a new president by the morning of Nov 7.
A Romney\Ryan ticket is like a nail in the coffin of the poor & middle-class! I don’t think the public at large understand exactly what these men plan to do to the lot of Us! And that’s throw our older kids off our insurance plans, destroy Medicare as we know it (by turning it into a voucher program) & playing Social Security on the stock market! Their “faith” in the Free Market is MUCH stronger than their faith in their fellow man or in G-d! Not to mention their deplorable attitudes towards Immigrants, Muslims, Women, or those needing Food Stamps or Assistance! And let’s not forget their lust for MORE WAR too! What are people thinking getting “excited” about a ticket like this?! Unless you’re a very rich person… their policies would completely destroy most people’s middle class way of life. They will be the ticket that will finally push the last of the middle-classers into the pit of poverty. Who has the $ to pay for private insurance?! Who here could survive living in a nursing home…if Romeny\Ryan’s new Medicare “voucher” system runs out & you’ve got to pay the difference out of pocket? Or what happens to your children, when the Stock Market fails us all AGAIN (and it will, because it’s nothing more than glorified gambling), and now there’s no more Social Security?! And a Romney\Ryan ticket plan to give the rich even MORE tax breaks! Paying for them w\the working-man’s blood, sweat & tears! G-d help Us All if a Romney\Ryan Presidency takes over! It really will be a nail in the coffin for the bulk of Us who don’t make a quarter of a million dollars or more a year. 🙁
The government provides services some I don’t like and don’t use and some you don’t like and not use. These services and thos who provide these services must be paid. There are contenders wello paid who sit in Washington and help those who use those services to avoid payment. All mloney is not hard earned when a jEWISH gambling mogul amasses billions from the vices of people in China and Las vegas these profits are not hard earned instead he pries on the vices of people. I dion’;t fly so who cares if a plane loaded with people blows up in the sky. The number of nuclear war heads this country keeps in acitve condition is enough to blow up the entire world. Gains from gambling on the stock market is not hard earned.