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Obama blasts GOP, President Barack Obama delivered a blistering critique of the House Republican budget Tuesday, calling it a "radical" proposal, "a Trojan horse" and "a prescription for decline" and tying it directly to Mitt Romney, the GOP candidate the White House believes
Mr. Obama will face in November."This is now the party's governing platform," Mr. Obama said of the GOP budget, which was passed by the House but has almost no chance of becoming law because of Democratic opposition. "It is thinly veiled social Darwinism."Mr. Obama was combative as he criticized the budget drafted by Rep.....online.wsj.

Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), who recently endorsed Mr. Romney for president. Mr. Obama cast the proposal as a carbon copy of GOP fiscal policies that led to the U.S. economic crisis.

"In this country, broad-based prosperity has never trickled down from the success of a wealthy few," Mr. Obama said in the speech to reporters and editors at a luncheon hosted by the Associated Press. "It has always come from the success of a strong and growing middle class."

House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) dismissed Mr. Obama as "unserious" about tackling the country's economic challenges because he is focused on campaigning over governing.

"Instead of reaching across the aisle to enact the changes needed to restore America's prosperity, the president has resorted to distortions and partisan potshots, and recommitted himself to policies that have made our country's debt crisis worse," Mr. Boehner said in a statement.Mr. Ryan wrote on Twitter on Tuesday morning that the speech only underscores the president's "leadership failures."

For the first time the president singled out Mr. Romney by name, unprompted, to highlight the former Massachusetts governor's support for the GOP budget. He even poked fun at Mr. Romney, whom the Obama campaign has cast as out of touch with average Americans, for describing the GOP budget as "marvelous."

"It's a word you don't often hear, generally," Mr. Obama said, chuckling.

Campaigning in Wisconsin on Tuesday, Mr. Romney pointed to the slow economic recovery and high gasoline prices as indications Mr. Obama's policies have failed. "He, of course, will look for someone else to blame," Mr. Romney said of the president.

The GOP budget proposes, among other things, turning Medicaid into a block-grant program controlled by the states, restructuring Medicare and reducing the top individual and corporate tax rates to 25% from 35%. The Republican plan also calls for deep spending cuts.

Mr. Obama offered a bleak picture of the plan's impact, were it to become law, saying it would gut education and research-and-development programs, cause a rise in crime and increase health-care costs.

Mr. Obama's budget includes proposals to raise taxes on families who earn more than $250,000 a year, expand spending for education and energy programs and make modest changes to Medicare and Medicaid to help reduce the federal budget deficit.

Messrs. Obama and Ryan both claim their budgets would slow the growth of the federal debt over time. The debt in 2020 would be equivalent to 77% of gross domestic product under Mr. Obama's plan and 65% of GDP under the GOP plan, according to an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.

The debt would be 76% of GDP in 2020 under current law, which assumes the Bush tax cuts would expire and deep across-the-board spending cuts would take effect at year end. Because Congress is widely expected to change the law before year end to extend at least some of the tax cuts and reduce the spending cuts, the committee also projects that the debt will reach 89% of GDP by 2020 under more realistic assumptions.

White House officials said the speech Tuesday followed up on the president's fiery populist address in December in Osawatomie, Kan., where Mr. Obama promoted an economic vision that called for shared sacrifice and sought to bolster the middle class.

The president will spend the coming days advocating the so-called Buffett rule detailed in his budget, said White House officials. The measure would require Americans earning $1 million or more a year to pay at least a 30% income-tax rate. Senate Democratic leaders have scheduled a vote on it in two weeks, though it is expected to fail because of Republican opposition.

Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, said Mr. Obama's speech Tuesday reflects a "cynical" and "deeply partisan" politician.

"In the final year of his term, with no record to run on, he has resorted to the very divisive, disingenuous rhetoric he once decried," Mr. Priebus said in a statement.