To Obama, Republican Budget Plans Are ‘Snake Oil’

By HELENE COOPER, NYT

WINDHAM, N.H. - President Obama took on the budget proposals of Mitt Romney and Representative Paul D. Ryan on Saturday, accusing the Republican ticket of seeking to cut trillions of dollars in taxes for the wealthy while raising taxes for the middle class and making deep cuts to programs that would benefit working Americans.

Venturing deep into Mr. Romney's backyard, Mr. Obama spent Saturday campaigning in New Hampshire, where Mr. Romney has a vacation home, as the focused effort on the remaining swing states intensified. Mr. Obama won New Hampshire in 2008. But Mr. Romney's ties here put the state in play, and in what is increasingly expected to be a close election, the president may need every one of this state's four electoral votes to get to 270 and clinch re-election.

Jogging up to the stage in a hot and packed high school gymnasium, Mr. Obama zeroed in quickly on the twofer of Mr. Ryan's controversial budget proposals and Mr. Romney's income taxes. Two days after Mr. Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, said that he paid at least 13 percent of his income in taxes each year during the past decade, Mr. Obama said that Mr. Ryan would make that relatively low percentage even lower.

"He put forward a plan that would let Governor Romney pay less than one percent in taxes a year," Mr. Obama said, to outraged jeers from the crowd. "And here's the kicker, he expects you to pick up the tab!"

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