FOXNews.com: Obama Rips GOP BudgetIn Sync With Primary Vote

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Obama Rips GOP BudgetIn Sync With Primary Vote Apr 3rd 2012, 15:56 WASHINGTON –  President Obama was launching an election-year broadside Tuesday against House Republicans -- and particularly Rep. Paul Ryan -- as he planned to denounce their $3.5 trillion budget plan as a "Trojan horse" and "radical" overhaul that is wrong for America.  The president planned to tackle the budget plan in a speech shortly after noon to newspaper executives.  It comes on the same day as a three-contest set of Republican presidential primaries, marking his latest apparent attempt to distract from the GOP race. He employed a similar strategy on Super Tuesday in early March, holding a press conference the same day and ensuring the event shared top billing in media coverage with the GOP elections.  Before he even delivered the speech, Republicans were lashing out at the president for the "partisan" address.  In excerpts released in advance, the president used searing language to decry the GOP budget bill, which passed the House last week on a mostly party-line vote.  "It's a Trojan horse. Disguised as deficit reduction plan, it's really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country," Obama said. "It's nothing but thinly veiled social Darwinism."  He went on to say the plan is "antithetical to our entire history."  "And by gutting the very things we need to grow an economy that's built to last -- education and training; research and development -- it's a prescription for decline," Obama said in the prepared remarks.  The plan has faced fierce resistance from Democrats, who say it would gut Medicare, slash taxes for the wealthy and lead to deep cuts to crucial programs such as aid to college students and highway and rail projects.  White House advisers billed the speech as an important marker for the president as he seeks re-election.  Senior administration officials say Obama is taking particular aim at Ryan because if any of the Republican presidential candidates are elected, they would sign his budget plan into law.  Ryan is also front and center because late last week he endorsed Romney ahead of Tuesday's primary in the House Budget chairman's home state of Wisconsin. Ryan has been talked about as a possible vice presidential contender.  A spokesman for Ryan fired back in advance of the president's Tuesday speech.  "For four years the president has refused to honestly confront the most predictable economic crisis in our history," Ryan spokesman Conor Sweeney said on Monday. "Instead, he has accelerated the nation toward this looming debt-fueled crisis with reckless budgets, always accompanied by partisan speeches that seek to divide the nation in order to distract from his legacy of broken promises. If he thinks there is no political price to pay for this total abdication of leadership, he is due for a rude awakening."  The primary theme of the speech will be overall fairness in the tax code, which is shaping up to be the central focus of Obama's re-election effort. It's a message the president first previewed about everyone paying their "fair share" during a heavily watched speech in Kansas late last year, followed by a call to action on the same issue in his January State of the Union Address.  Senior administration officials say Obama will spend more time on Tuesday discussing the so-called Buffett Rule, which is his plan to institute a tax surcharge on millionaires. Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell panned the proposal.  "This is yet another proposal from the White House that won't create a single job or lower the price at the pump by a penny, but may have the opposite effect," he said in a statement.  Ryan's proposal aims to slash the deficit and the size of government while offering sharply lower tax rates in return for eliminating many popular tax breaks. GOP front-runner Mitt Romney and his Republican rivals have said they would support Ryan's budget plan, which has little chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate but lays out the GOP's fiscal priorities.  Obama was making the case that whoever wins the White House will face an economy still recovering from the "worst economic calamity since the Great Depression" and many Americans will still be looking for jobs and lacking financial security. By next year, "a debt that has grown over the last decade, primarily as a result of two wars, two massive tax cuts and an unprecedented financial crisis, will have to be paid down," Obama says in the prepared remarks.  Obama was speaking at a luncheon of 900 editors and publishers following The Associated Press' annual meeting.  Fox News' Ed Henry and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Related Stories There's a primary, there's the president: Obama appearances on election days

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