President Obama today used a speech before the Associated Press Luncheon to deliver a defense of the social safety net and government investment, while laying out the empirical case against supply-side economics. “You would think that after the results of this experiment in trickle-down economics were made painfully clear, the proponents of this theory might moderate their views a bit,” Obama said. “But that’s exactly the opposite of what they’ve done.”
In that vein, he took a shot at the House Republican budget that was passed last week (with zero Democratic votes), calling it “thinly-veiled Social Darwinism”:
This Congressional Republican budget is something different altogether. It is a Trojan Horse. Disguised as deficit reduction plan, it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It is thinly-veiled Social Darwinism. It is antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everybody who’s willing to work for it — a place where prosperity doesn’t trickle down from the top, but grows outward from the heart of the middle class. And by gutting the very things we need to grow an economy that’s built to last — education and training; research and development; our infrastructure — it is a prescription for decline.
Watch it:
“What drags down our entire economy is when there is an ever-widening chasm between the ultra rich and everybody else,” Obama added. The House Republican budget would give millionaires hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax cuts, while getting 62 percent of its spending cuts from programs that benefit low-income Americans.