Obama Slams Republicans for Education Spending Cuts

Even in a time of "tough choices" for federal spending, President Obama said Saturday the nation cannot afford to "shortchange our children's education" -- a course he said Republicans would take in their drive to cut the budget.

"Nothing would be more detrimental to our prospects for success than cutting back on education," Obama said in his weekly address. "It would consign America to second place in our fiercely competitive global economy." China, India, Germany and South Korea, he said "aren't playing for second."

The president said Republicans want to cut spending on education by one-fifth, 20 percent. If Republicans in Congress "had their way," he said, "we'd have a harder time meeting" the goal of producing a higher proportion of college graduates than any other country by 2020.

Last month, House Minority Leader John Boehner proposed pulling back non-security discretionary spending to 2008 levels -- roughly 20 percent. PolitFact, the St. Petersburg Times prize-winning fact-checker, says that could mean a reduction in the range of 19 percent to 24 percent in the education budget, But Boehner's office told the Politfact.com the cuts would not necessarily be uniform across every agency -- meaning some programs could be spared the full reduction.

For his part, the president did not say what "tough choices" he was willing to make to control a budget that is bleeding with trillion-dollar plus deficits, except to say that "tens of billions of dollars in wasteful subsidies to banks" are being eliminated in the student loan program to free up money that will make college more affordable. He also touted a new Skills for America's Future program aimed at matching what's taught in community colleges with employers' needs. And he said the Race to the Top fund is rewarding states with federal dollars when they demonstrate that they are designing innovative, reform-minded education programs.

"At a time when most of the new jobs being created will require some kind of higher education,; when countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow, giving our kids the best education possible is an economic imperative..." Obama said. "Nothing would be more detrimental to our prospects than cutting back on education."

Republicans, in their weekly talk, criticized the Democratic majority in Congress for recessing until after the Nov. 2 election without taking action on Bush-era tax cuts, which expire in January. "Our problem is not that we are taxed to little," said Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo. "The problem is that Washington spends too much."