OSKALOOSA, Iowa — President Barack Obama called the latest addition to the GOP ticket, Rep. Paul Ryan, "a good man, a family man" during a speech in Iowa on Tuesday. But he had little good to say about the Wisconsin congressman's positions on the budget and economy, criticizing Republican economic policy as "trickle-down fairy dust."
"They don't have a plan to cut the deficit. They don't have a plan to increase jobs. They sure don't have a plan to restore the middle class," said Obama. "We don't need more tax cuts for people like me."
Obama delivered a half-hour speech in Oskaloosa, his first visit to the eastern Iowa city since he campaigned for the Democratic nomination he won four years ago. Obama's staff, which distributed tickets for the event, said 852 people attended.
Obama acknowledged he still has considerable work to do, including on the budget and economy, areas where the Republicans hope to win major support during the campaign. Romney's biggest move in that regard has been last weekend's announcement of Ryan as his running mate. The Wisconsin congressman has been a primary draftsman of Republican budget plans on Capitol Hill and leads the House Budget Committee.
But Obama said he and the Republicans present "two fundamentally different visions on the path we need to take for our kids and our grandkids."
He praised wind energy - a booming industry in Iowa over the past decade - as a business in which labor, construction and parts manufacturing all happen in the United States. He noted Romney's opposition to tax breaks for wind power and the Republican's explanation that you cannot put a windmill atop a car.
"Gov. Romney may have figured out that you can't drive a car with a windmill on it, but he hasn't figured out that America produces ... enough wind energy to supply 13 million homes with clean, renewable energy," said Obama.
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Details for this story were reported by the Oskaloosa (Iowa) Herald.
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