Black caucus chair rips Barack Obama's budget

“We cannot win the future by leaving our most vulnerable behind," said Emanuel Cleaver.

Black Democrats are hitting President Barack Obama hard for his 2012 budget, further illustrating a divide between a core constituency and the White House.

The most resounding statement came Monday from Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, who said he is “struggling to understand how this budget helps us to best achieve” the goal of protecting “our children from a mountain of debt.

“Cutting funding to programs that assist hard-working Americans, help families heat their homes, and expand access to graduate-level education seems to conflict with the notion of winning the future,” Cleaver said in a statement. “We cannot win the future by leaving our most vulnerable behind. Our success as a Nation is interwoven in the success of every community. Until we grasp that concept, as a nation, we will never see the full potential of this country.”

Rep. Jesse Jackson, a Democrat from Chicago who has long been close to the Obama team, said the president’s budget proposal is “right from the Republican plan” and it “opens the door for huge cuts that the Republicans are forcing us to digest for the rest of” this fiscal year.

He likened the spending plan something that Ronald Reagan would’ve put out.

“How can we stop the Republican cuts when the president has one-upped them?” Jackson said in a release. “As the president, he should be the last line of defense for the most vulnerable Americans, instead of the first one to cut.”