Rick Perry attacked President Obama for his “socialist policies” in a new Web ad released by his campaign Wednesday. Perry also called out the president for using the word "lazy" when referring to American business practices.
"Can you believe that? That's what our president thinks is wrong with America? That Americans are lazy? That's pathetic,” Perry says in the ad.
"We've been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades," Obama said last weekend at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hawaii. He was speaking about American businesses “tak[ing] for granted [that] people will want to come here and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new business into America."
Perry goes on to slam Obama for his “socialist policies” and advocates a constitutional balanced-budget amendment in the video.
“It’s time to clean house in Washington,” Perry says. “Obama’s socialist policies are bankrupting America. We must stop him now.”
Perry’s response followed that of fellow GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney.
“Sometimes I just don’t think that President Obama understands America,” Romney said at a campaign stop in South Carolina Tuesday. “Now, I say that because this week, or was it last week, he said that Americans are lazy. I don’t think that describes Americans.”
Obama’s reelection campaign responded, saying “apparently” neither Perry nor Romney think Obama “should encourage CEOs to promote the United States abroad in order to create American jobs and attract investment at home.”
Perry and Romney “have opposed the President’s efforts to create two million jobs now and instead of laying out their own plan to do so, they have endorsed a radical budget plan that would wipe out investments necessary to create jobs in programs like education, research and development and clean energy and shift a greater tax burden away from millionaires and billionaires onto the backs of the middle class and seniors,” Ben LaBolt, campaign spokesman, said in a statement.
Romney said America is being “held down” by the government and he “can't wait to get to the White House to be able to return America to the people of America.”
— Cameron Joseph contributed to this report.
— This post was updated at 4:01 p.m.
