Six weeks before the U.S. presidential election, President Barack Obama
and his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, spent Saturday campaigning and
raising money. Each candidate made the case for his plan to revive the
American economy.
In the north central state of Wisconsin, the president told supporters
in the city of Milwaukee his economic blueprint will better serve
middle-class Americans than Governor Romney’s plan.
"Top-down economics never works," said Obama. "The country does not
succeed when just those at the very top are doing well. We succeed when
the middle class gets bigger, when it feels greater security.”
Romney, in his weekly podcast, said the president’s economic policies
depend too much on government and do too little to help the private
sector.
“Under President Obama, we have a stagnant economy that fosters
government dependency. My policies will create a growing economy that
fosters upward mobility,” said Romney.
Romney spent Saturday in California, not looking for votes but raising
money at events in Los Angeles and San Diego.
Obama is widely expected to win California, the nation’s most populous
state.
The president was visiting Wisconsin for the first time in nine months.
His wife Michelle is expected to campaign there in the coming days.
Public opinion polls in Wisconsin show Obama leading by at least seven
points.
At one of his three stops in Milwaukee, the president acknowledged the
anti-American unrest in a number of Muslim nations, and said the United
States must meet its foreign policy challenges.
“This is a world still full of serious threats. We are going to have to
work to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. We are going to have
to make sure that not only our diplomatic posts are safe, but we go
after folks who threaten or try to kill Americans,” said Obama.
Romney’s vice-presidential running mate, Wisconsin Congressman Paul
Ryan, sharply criticized Obama’s foreign policy on Saturday.
Campaigning
in Florida, Ryan said the president has made America weak.
“By gutting defense, by showing we want to cut defense, by being
equivocal, by not speaking up forcefully and clearly for American values
of freedom and individual dignity and individual rights and religious
freedom, we are projecting weakness abroad,” said Ryan.
Ryan also told Cuban-Americans in Miami that the Obama administration is
too soft on the Castro government in Cuba.
Romney is expected to campaign more heavily in swing states in the
coming days. The president will visit two college campuses in Ohio in
the coming week, and also is likely to visit more swing states.
