'When India, China not cutting on education why should US'

US President Barack Obama has lashed out at the opposition Republican for suggesting cut in the education budget as he told an election rally in Virginia that when countries like India and China are not reducing their education budget, why should America.

"Let me tell you, China is not cutting education. South Korea is not cutting its education spending. India is not cutting education spending. Germany is not cutting education spending. Those countries aren’t playing for second place. And neither does the United States of America. We play for first place," Obama said.

"We see an America where we invest in homegrown innovation and ingenuity, where we export more goods so we create more jobs here at home, where we make it easier to start a business or patent an invention," he said.

"We don't want to keep giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas. We want to give tax breaks to companies that are investing right here...To small businesses and American manufacturers and clean energy companies," he said.

"I don't want solar panels and wind turbines and electric cars made in Europe or made in Asia. I want them made here in the United States of America with American workers. That's the choice in this election," he said amidst applause.

"We see an America where every citizen -- not just some, but every citizen -- have the skills and the training to compete with any worker in the world. We can't allow other countries to out-compete us when it comes to math or science or college graduation rates.

We used to be number one in college graduation rates. Now we're number nine. We used to be number one in science and math. Now we’re 21st and 25th. That makes no sense," Obama said.

"That's why we set a goal that by 2020 we will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world," he said.