STRIKING BACK: Sen. Marco Rubio last night slams President Obama’s State of the Union call for more government expenditures. (CNN)
WASHINGTON — Sen. Marco Rubio, the Republican Party’s newest standard-bearer, wasted little time in attacking President Obama’s call for government programs to spark the sluggish economy.
“This opportunity, to make the middle class or beyond no matter where you start in life, isn’t bestowed on us from Washington,” said Rubio, of Florida, who was tapped by the GOP to respond to Obama’s State of the Union Address.
“Presidents in both parties, from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, have known that our free-enterprise economy is the source of our middle-class prosperity,” Rubio said. “But President Obama? He believes it’s the cause of our problems.”
Rubio challenged Obama to tackle reforms to entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security — often called the third rail of American politics.
“The biggest obstacles to balancing the budget are programs where spending is already locked in,” Rubio said. “I would never support any changes that would hurt seniors, like my mother. But anyone who is in favor of leaving Medicare exactly the way it is right now is in favor of bankrupting it.”
Rubio, considered a likely 2016 presidential candidate, took his message directly to Obama forcefully, countering the call for more revenues to balance the federal budget.
“Mr. President, I still live in the same working-class neighborhood I grew up in,” Rubio said. “My neighbors aren’t millionaires . . . I don’t oppose your plans because I want to protect the rich, I oppose your plans because I want to protect my neighbors.”
The nation’s economy shrank during the last three months of last year, Rubio said. But a turnaround of growing the economy by 4 percent a year would help reduce the national deficit by $4 trillion, he said.
“Raising taxes won’t create private-sector jobs,” Rubio said. “There’s no realistic tax increase that could lower our deficits by almost $4 trillion. That’s why I hope the president will abandon his obsession with raising taxes and instead work with us to achieve real growth in our economy.
“The real cause of our debt is that our government has been spending $1 trillion more than it takes in every year,” Rubio said.
“If we can get our economy healthy again, our children will be the most prosperous Americans ever,” he said.