President Obama Mocks GOP Nominating Contest as Political 'Hunger Games'
"I've lost count how many Republicans are running for this job," he joked.
— -- What if the presidential nominating process were like “Hunger Games”?
Well, President Obama suggested today that the GOP field has enough candidates to try it out.
“I've lost count how many Republicans are running for this job. They'll have enough for an actual 'Hunger Games,'” Obama joked during a speech in LaCrosse, Wisconsin.
The president was in Wisconsin to outline a proposal to update a Department of Labor rule that would giving some 5 million Americans a pay raise through raising the threshold for employees required to receive overtime pay. But the speech also became one of the president’s most aggressive offensives yet against the Republican 2016 field.
The president called the GOP field of presidential hopefuls “an interesting bunch” and said that while they are good people, their ideas are bad. He even compared them to the sort of wacky “Uncle Harry” who joins the family for Thanksgiving dinner.
“You still love him, he's still a member of your family, right? But you've got to correct him, you don't want to put him in charge of stuff. That's all I'm saying,” he said.
The president also directly dinged Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who filed today with the Federal Election Commission as a presidential candidate, ahead of an official campaign launch on July 13.
Without mentioning directly Walker by name, Obama took a swing at the governor’s policies in the state he was addressing.
“We've seen what happens when top-down economics meets the real world,” Obama said. “We've got proof right here in Wisconsin. You had a statewide fair pay law that was repealed. Your right to organize and bargain collectively was attacked, per student education funding was cut, your minimum wage has been stuck in place.”
On the topic of his new overtime pay policy, President Obama said it will ensure that people are getting a "fair day's pay" for "a hard day's work."
"It's one of the single most important steps we can take to help grow middle-class wages," Obama said. "It's going to give as many as 5 million Americans, including 80,000 folks right here in Wisconsin, the overtime protections they deserve. It's the right thing to do. The right thing to do."
Under the new rule, employers will be required to pay employees earning less than $50,440 time-and-a-half when their work week exceeds 40 hours, up from the current threshold of $23,660.