Thaindian News

Washington, July 1 (IANS) Citing stiff competition from nation’s like China, India and Brazil, President Barack Obama has said he is not prepared to bring US deficit down by sacrificing education, medical research or rebuilding of infrastructure.

“We live in a world where America is facing stiff competition for good jobs from rapidly growing nations, like China and India and Brazil,” he said at two Democratic party fundraisers in Philadelphia Thursday lamenting the lack of progress on some of the nation’s problems.

“For a long time we were told the best way to win that competition is just to undermine consumer protections and undermine clean air laws and clean water laws and hand out tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires,” Obama said.

“That was the idea that held sway for close to a decade. And let’s face it, it didn’t work out very well,” he said accusing opposition Republicans seeking their party’s presidential nomination for the 2012 election for already being more interested in political attacks than solving America’s problems.

“They won’t have a plan, they’ll attack,” Obama said. “The American people are a lot less interested in us attacking each other. They’re more interested in us attacking the country’s problems.”

In current negotiations over the budget deficit, Obama said Republicans are advocating policies that would turn back the progress made during his administration. “This is not just a numbers debate, this is a values debate,” he said. “We can make changes that are balanced.” ”

“Like families all across America, government has to live within its means. So I’m prepared to bring our deficit down by trillions of dollars,” Obama said.

But “I’m not going to reduce our deficit by eliminating medical research being done by our scientists. I won’t sacrifice rebuilding our roads and our bridges and our railways and our airports,” he said.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)