TAMPA, Fla. — Former Mississippi Republican Gov. Haley Barbour told The Daily Caller that the majority of Americans think the U.S. is still in a recession while President Barack Obama probably does not agree.
TheDC asked Barbour if he thinks the Bush-era tax rates for every income bracket should be extended. Obama only supports the extension of the rates for families making under $250,000 per year.
“Barack Obama said in 2009 and Barack Obama said in 2011 that it would be a mistake to raise taxes in a recession. Well, 70 percent of Americans think we’re in a recession. Maybe Barack Obama doesn’t,” Barbour told TheDC during the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla.
Barbour argued that “the biggest problem” with the national economy is Obama’s policies.
“When small businessmen don’t know what the cost and the obligations they will have for health insurance for their employees, how do they hire more people? When the president says every breath, I want to tax the job creators in the country, the biggest tax increase in American history, how do they decide, ‘well I’m going to take some of my savings and invest that when I may need to pay taxes when the government sucks up all the money out of the economy.'”
In the video interview, Barbour provided his analysis of the race between Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney.
“We had a very ugly nomination contest, Obama had smooth sailing, and yet the first Gallup poll taken after Romney became the presumptive nominee, Romney’s up two points. Romney went and had a great spring. I thought during the summer the Obama carpet-bomb attacks took some damage. Romney slipped a little bit in the polls, picked Paul Ryan, right back where we are … most of us believe that this is a dead heat,” he told TheDC.
“Ronald Reagan was 9 points behind in August of 1980. George H. W. Bush was 17 points behind in August of 1988 but Mitt Romney to be even today says a heck of a lot more about their campaign than anything I can say.”
As the Obama campaign continues to run ads that attempt to portray Romney as rich and out of touch with average Americans, Barbour predicts that their efforts will not work in the long run.
“We have two people running for president, both of whom are very wealthy. Both of them are in the top one percent of all income earners in the United States. Obama and Romney are both one percenters and in fairness, both of them made their own money,” Barbour the TheDC.
“However, Mitt Romney made his money by getting people to have confidence in him and invest their money, their pension funds money, their non-profit’s money, their university’s money in him and he took that and bought failing companies and 95 percent of the time he brought those companies back, creating thousands and thousands and thousands of jobs, paid big dividends to those universities and non-profits.”
Barbour said Barack Obama “got rich by writing two books about himself. Now, the American people can see the difference.”