During the first stop of a three-day campaign-style blitz across the country promoting his vision for reducing the $1.4 trillion deficit, President Obama decried the country’s “crumbling” infrastructure and said proposed GOP cuts would lead to “potholes everywhere.”
The Republican plan, he said, would cut transportation costs by a third, leading to more deterioration of the nation’s roads and bridges, which would in turn, would hamper economic growth.
“So we have potholes everywhere….and we think that businesses are going to come here and invest?” he told a townhall gathering at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, VA. “Businesses are going to start investing in other countries because they’re gonna say it costs us too much money because our trucks going over those potholes costs us too much money to fix.”
Obama pointed to the 2007 collapse of a Minnesota bridge as evidence that the country needs to continue to invest in roads, bridges, trains and airports while trying to pay down its massive debt.
Obama told the audience of community college students, professors and faculty that he needed them to mobilize and get directly involved in the debate over spending cuts. If not, he said Republicans and special interest groups would balance the budget on the backs of college students by slashing student aid and other education spending.
“I cannot afford to have all of you as bystanders,” Obama said. “There are powerful interests in Washington … they are going to want to reduce the deficit on your backs.”
Republicans, he said, want to cut Pell Grant scholarships and student loans, while his budget would increase education spending slightly at the same time it cuts $4 trillion over 12 years.
Obama drew applause when he pledged to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans and cut unnecessary weapons programs in the defense budget.
“We’re going to have to ask everyone to sacrifice,” he said. “If we’re going to ask colleges to sacrifice, than we can ask millionaires and billionaires to make a little sacrifice too…We can’t just tell the wealthiest among us: you just sit there and relax.”
Northern Virginia helped Obama win the entire state in 2008, the first time Virginia had voted for a Democratic president in decades. Obama’s campaign also attracted thousands of young voters who will no doubt be an important bloc for his reelection effort in 2012.
At the Virginia townhall event, Obama repeated his view that Social Security is not a major factor in the deficit so should be treated separately in discussions about decreasing the deficit.
In response to a professor’s question about whether Social Security would be there in the future, Obama said he didn’t consider it one of the big deficit drivers like Medicare and Medicaid.
The President continued his attack of the GOP Medicare plan, warning that future Medicare recipients would pay more for healthcare because Republicans were planning to turn it into a voucher system that would not cover all of seniors’ costs.
“Their main plan to reduce long-term deficits and debt is to turn Medicare into a voucher system,” Obama explained. “That would fundamentally change Medicare as we know, and I’m not going to sign up for that.”
Obama will head to Palo Alto, Calif. for a Facebook townhall on Wednesday and Reno, Nev. for a third townhall discussion on Thursday. The California swing will include Democratic party fundraisers in Los Angeles and the Bay Area.
