President Barack Obama on Tuesday painted himself as a proud defender of America’s middle class even as some of his Republican rivals claim his tax-raising plan amounts to “class warfare.”
“If asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as a teacher makes me a warrior for the middle class, I wear it as a badge of honor,” the president told a crowd of about 400 people on Broadway in New York.
“The only class warfare I’ve seen is war against middle-class folks in this country,” Obama added, hitting out at Republicans’ opposition to his jobs plan and plan to raise taxes on very wealthy Americans.
It was Obama’s second campaign event in as many days, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Supporters paid between $2,500 dollars and $35,800 a ticket for the Obama 2012 reelection fundraiser.
“I intend to win this next election because we’ve got better ideas,” Obama said. “I’m ready to fight and hope you are too.”
Obama, with a $447 billion jobs bill, and a new bid to raise taxes on the rich by $1.5 trillion to cut the deficit, is banking on Americans to buy into his vision for an activist government to lead them into better economic times.
“This is not class warfare, it is math,” an impassioned Obama said Monday.
Top Republicans in Congress have concluded however that after three years of economic misery, voters have soured on government spending to try to boost economic growth.
