Obama: Deficit speech not 'partisan'

CHICAGO, April 14 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama said Thursday his speech on dealing with debt and the budget deficit was "not a partisan shot" at Republicans.

Speaking to Democratic supporters in Chicago, Obama rejected criticism that the speech he delivered Wednesday was a partisan attack on Republican proposals to reduce the federal deficit.

"The speech I gave [Wednesday] was not a partisan shot at the other side," he said. "It was an attempt to clarify the choice we have as a country right now."

Obama said if Democrats are "progressive, we've got to care about the deficit as much as the other side does … ."

He said a budget proposal by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., was "entirely sincere," but Ryan's plan says "we can't afford to be compassionate … we can't afford Medicare," roads and bridges, broadband lines or healthcare "for another 50 million people."

"That's the choice they pose," the president said.

In a speech Wednesday defending his debt-reduction plan Obama said Americans won't "have to sacrifice the America we believe in ... as long as I'm president."

"The America I know is generous and compassionate -- a land of opportunity and optimism," Obama said in defending his debt-reduction plan, which includes tax increases on the rich and spending cuts "across the budget," while decrying the Republicans' plan of extending tax cuts for the rich and increasing spending cuts as "nothing serious or courageous."

"We don't have to choose between a future of spiraling debt and one where we forfeit investments in our people and our country," Obama said at George Washington University a day before flying to Chicago to launch his 2012 re-election bid and participate in three fundraisers.

"To meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms. We will all need to make sacrifices," he said. "But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in. And as long as I'm president, we won't."

He said the tax cuts for the rich, which he said the GOP hoped to pay for by increasing senior citizens' healthcare costs, would also not "happen as long as I'm president."

"As Ronald Reagan's own budget director said, there's nothing 'serious' or 'courageous about this plan," Obama said. "There's nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. There's nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don't have any clout on Capitol Hill. And this is not a vision of the America I know."

Expected Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney, who supports the GOP plan, said in a statement Obama's speech and proposals were "too little, too late."

"Instead of supporting spending cuts that lead to real deficit reduction and true reform of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, the president dug deep into his liberal playbook for 'solutions' highlighted by higher taxes," the statement said.

Obama plans to stay overnight in Chicago at his South Side Kenwood-neighborhood home and return to the White House Friday morning, the White House said.

No incumbent president has won re-election with a campaign headquarters outside Washington in decades but Obama advisers say the Chicago location will help build a stronger connection with grassroots supporters.