It was a busy day for campaign rallies in Columbus. In his 12th trip to the Buckeye State this year, President Obama told about 4,500 people at Schiller that heâd raise taxes on upper income Americans and would use money saved from fighting wars to reduce the national debt. He said Republicans want to go back to the same economic plan that he said plunged the nation into a recession. "They were happy to talk about all of the things that are wrong with America but they donât want to talk about how theyâd make it right. They want your vote but they donât want you to know their plan," President Obama said. Obama said heâs already cut taxes, saving the average American family about $3,600 a year. And he said itâs time that some Americans pay a little more right now.
I want to make sure we are asking the wealthiest households to pay slightly higher tax on incomes over 250,000 dollars, the same rate that we had when Bill Clinton was President, when our economy was creating 23 million new jobs, when we had the biggest surplus in history and we had a bunch of millionaires to boot.
Obama said the Republican plan promises lower taxes, increased defense spending, and deficit reduction, but he said it doesnât add up. "Iâm telling you, you cannot make it work. You cannot cross the Tâs and dot the Iâs on this plan. And Columbus is a town where youâve got to dot the I." Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney wasnât in Ohio to counter President Obamaâs back-to-back visits to Cincinnati and Columbus. Instead, the Romney campaign sent a surrogate â a US Senator whoâd been reportedly at the top of Romneyâs vice presidential list and a Tea Party favorite. About three hundred people gathered on the Statehouse lawn to hear Floridaâs Marco Rubio. âThe President will be here in a few minutes â not here, a few blocks away I guess. And heâs finally getting around to doing something about currency manipulation in China. Elections are funny like that. They get people to do stuff they should have done three and a half years ago.â? And Rubio said another thing Obama should have done years ago is deal with the national debt. Rubio said heâs not only not dealt with the debt as he promised, but that heâs made it worse. And he countered Mr. Obamaâs message of building on what his administration has done by saying what the president has built is a huge mountain of debt.
If we stay on the track heâs placed us on â these are his numbers, not mine. These are his ideas, not the ideas Iâm making up for him. The president has no â if we stay on the raod heâs outlined for us now, the debt will grow to levels no people have ever seen. And the debt is just part of the problem. You know whatâs just as bad as the debt â the interest on the debt.
Rubio talked up the concerns of college graduates having trouble finding work and workers nearing retirement watching their savings dwindle â and noted that things may never be the same again â but said â quoting here âthey can actually be better than theyâve ever been." But Rubio said thatâs only possible by returning to what he called the principles that made Americans prosperous and different - limited government and free enterprise, which he said Obama doesnât understand and Romney would embrace.