Emanuel says Obama ready for a fight

Echoing his boss’ fighting words, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel challenged Republicans on Sunday to offer alternatives to the president’s budget.

Emanuel, speaking on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” said the GOP has failed to propose alternatives to President Obama’s $3.55 trillion budget outline, which he said would take the country in a different direction from the last seven years under President Bush.

{mosads}“This budget fundamentally changes the culture in this way: it rejects the past and says we’re going to be a culture and society that invests and saves,” Emanuel said.
“We’ve laid out a vision,” the former congressman said. “Start to invest in America, invest in your middle class, make the tough choices, be honest with the American people. The challenge will be … will the Republicans meet the challenge of the future or keep us on the path that they have set for the last seven years that got us to his point of reckoning.”

The White House delivered its budget priorities to Congress on Thursday. The plan increases taxes on the wealthiest Americans in order to generate $1 trillion in revenue that Obama plans to use for expanded government programs, including health care reform, and tax breaks for lower and middle-income Americans. The budget  projects a jump in the federal deficit from $1.3 trillion to $1.75 trillion.
 
Emanuel emphasized that under Obama’s budget 95 percent of working Americans will receive a tax cut beginning on April 1. And, he added, no American would see a tax increase for two years. Obama’s budget would raise tax rates in the two highest income tax brackets in 2011.
Republicans have critiized the budget for including tax hikes and spending increases amid a recession.

“This week, the president submitted to Congress the single largest increase in federal spending in the history of the United States, while driving the deficit to levels that were once thought impossible,” Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said in the GOP’s response to the president’s weekly radio and internet address.

In his own weekly address, the president said he knows the “status quo” in Washington is preparing to fight his budget and reforms. “I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak,” he said. “My message to them is this: So am I.”

Emanuel said Obama will continue to make bipartisanship a priority and defended the stimulus bill, which he said had significant Republican support. While acknowledging that just three GOP senators and no Republican House members supported the $787 economic stimulus package, he said Republicans did support earlier legislation introduced by the president and that several Republican governors and mayors support the stimulus. “We did succeed,” he said.

Emanuel, whose was criticized as a hyper-partisan when selected as chief of staff, added that Republicans have to be willing to work with Obama.

“Our goal is to continue reach out,” he said, “and it’s our desire that Republicans would work with us and try to be constructive rather than adopt the philosophy of someone like Rush Limbaugh who’s praying for failure.”

Emanuel also said Limbaugh, the conservative radio talk show host who delivered the keynote address at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, is now the de facto leader of the GOP.

Emanuel described Limbaugh, who criticized Obama in a Washington speech on Saturday, as “the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party.” Emanuel said Limbaugh has been “upfront” and “hasn’t stepped back” from statements that he hopes Obama fails.
 
Limbaugh has said he hopes Obama will fail because he disagrees with his approach to government.