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CBS News...
Mitch Daniels’
GOP response: Full text
Below is the full prepared text of Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels
Republican response to President Obama State of the Union address:
“The status of ‘loyal opposition’ imposes on those out of power some
serious responsibilities: to show respect for the Presidency and its
occupant, to express agreement where it exists. Republicans tonight
salute our President, for instance, for his aggressive pursuit of the
murderers of 9/11, and for bravely backing long overdue changes in
public education. I personally would add to that list admiration for
the strong family commitment that he and the First Lady have displayed
to a nation sorely needing such examples.
“On these evenings, Presidents naturally seek to find the sunny side of
our national condition. But when President Obama claims that the state
of our union is anything but grave, he must know in his heart that this
is not true.
“The President did not cause the economic and fiscal crises that
continue in America tonight. But he was elected on a promise to fix
them, and he cannot claim that the last three years have made things
anything but worse: the percentage of Americans with a job is at the
lowest in decades. One in five men of prime working age, and nearly
half of all persons under 30, did not go to work today.
“In three short years, an unprecedented explosion of spending, with
borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffordable national
debt. And yet, the President has put us on a course to make it
radically worse in the years ahead. The federal government now spends
one of every four dollars in the entire economy; it borrows one of
every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small,
public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as
ours.
“The President’s grand experiment in trickle-down government has held
back rather than sped economic recovery. He seems to sincerely believe
we can build a middle class out of government jobs paid for with
borrowed dollars. In fact, it works the other way: a government as big
and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class,
and those who hope to join it.
“Those punished most by the wrong turns of the last three years are
those unemployed or underemployed tonight, and those so discouraged
that they have abandoned the search for work altogether. And no one has
been more tragically harmed than the young people of this country, the
first generation in memory to face a future less promising than their
parents did.
“As Republicans our first concern is for those waiting tonight to begin
or resume the climb up life’s ladder. We do not accept that ours will
ever be a nation of haves and have nots; we must always be a nation of
haves and soon to haves.
“In our economic stagnation and indebtedness, we are only a short
distance behind Greece, Spain, and other European countries now facing
economic catastrophe. But ours is a fortunate land. Because the world
uses our dollar for trade, we have a short grace period to deal with
our dangers. But time is running out, if we are to avoid the fate of
Europe, and those once-great nations of history that fell from the
position of world leadership.
“So 2012 is a year of true opportunity, maybe our last, to restore an
America of hope and upward mobility, and greater equality. The
challenges aren’t matters of ideology, or party preference; the
problems are simply mathematical, and the answers are purely practical.
“An opposition that would earn its way back to leadership must offer
not just criticism of failures that anyone can see, but a positive and
credible plan to make life better, particularly for those aspiring to
make a better life for themselves. Republicans accept this duty,
gratefully.
“The routes back to an America of promise, and to a solvent America
that can pay its bills and protect its vulnerable, start in the same
place. The only way up for those suffering tonight, and the only way
out of the dead end of debt into which we have driven, is a private
economy that begins to grow and create jobs, real jobs, at a much
faster rate than today.
“Contrary to the President’s constant disparagement of people in
business, it’s one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve
Jobs - what a fitting name he had - created more of them than all those
stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew. Out here in Indiana,
when a businessperson asks me what he can do for our state, I say
‘First, make money. Be successful. If you make a profit, you’ll have
something left to hire someone else, and some to donate to the good
causes we love.’
“The extremism that stifles the development of homegrown energy, or
cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands,
or jacks up consumer utility bills for no improvement in either human
health or world temperature, is a pro-poverty policy. It must be
replaced by a passionate pro-growth approach that breaks all ties and
calls all close ones in favor of private sector jobs that restore
opportunity for all and generate the public revenues to pay our bills.
“That means a dramatically simpler tax system of fewer loopholes and
lower rates. A pause in the mindless piling on of expensive new
regulations that devour dollars that otherwise could be used to hire
somebody. It means maximizing on the new domestic energy technologies
that are the best break our economy has gotten in years.
“There is a second item on our national must-do list: we must unite to
save the safety net. Medicare and Social Security have served us well,
and that must continue. But after half and three quarters of a century
respectively, it’s not surprising that they need some repairs. We can
preserve them unchanged and untouched for those now in or near
retirement, but we must fashion a new, affordable safety net so future
Americans are protected, too.
“Decades ago, for instance, we could afford to send millionaires
pension checks and pay medical bills for even the wealthiest among us.
Now, we can’t, so the dollars we have should be devoted to those who
need them most.
“The mortal enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who, in
contempt of the plain arithmetic, continue to mislead Americans that we
should change nothing. Listening to them much longer will mean that
these proud programs implode, and take the American economy with them.
It will mean that coming generations are denied the jobs they need in
their youth and the protection they deserve in their later years.
“It’s absolutely so that everyone should contribute to our national
recovery, including of course the most affluent among us. There are
smart ways and dumb ways to do this: the dumb way is to raise rates in
a broken, grossly complex tax system, choking off growth without
bringing in the revenues we need to meet our debts. The better course
is to stop sending the wealthy benefits they do not need, and stop
providing them so many tax preferences that distort our economy and do
little or nothing to foster growth.
“It’s not fair and it’s not true for the President to attack
Republicans in Congress as obstacles on these questions. They and they
alone have passed bills to reduce borrowing, reform entitlements, and
encourage new job creation, only to be shot down time and time again by
the President and his Democratic Senate allies.
“This year, it falls to Republicans to level with our fellow citizens
about this reality: if we fail to act to grow the private sector and
save the safety net, nothing else will matter much. But to make such
action happen, we also must work, in ways we Republicans have not
always practiced, to bring Americans together.
“No feature of the Obama Presidency has been sadder than its constant
efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating
others. As in previous moments of national danger, we Americans are all
in the same boat. If we drift, quarreling and paralyzed, over a Niagara
of debt, we will all suffer, regardless of income, race, gender, or
other category. If we fail to shift to a pro-jobs, pro-growth economic
policy, there will never be enough public revenue to pay for our safety
net, national security, or whatever size government we decide to have.
“As a loyal opposition, who put patriotism and national success ahead
of party or ideology or any self-interest, we say that anyone who will
join us in the cause of growth and solvency is our ally, and our
friend. We will speak the language of unity. Let us rebuild our
finances, and the safety net, and reopen the door to the stairway
upward; any other disagreements we may have can wait.
“You know, the most troubling contention in our national life these
days isn’t about economics, or policy at all. It’s about us, as a free
people. In two alarming ways, that contention is that we Americans just
can’t cut it anymore.
“In word and deed, the President and his allies tell us that we just
cannot handle ourselves in this complex, perilous world without their
benevolent protection. Left to ourselves, we might pick the wrong
health insurance, the wrong mortgage, the wrong school for our kids;
why, unless they stop us, we might pick the wrong light bulb!
“A second view, which I admit some Republicans also seem to hold, is
that we Americans are no longer up to the job of self-government. We
can’t do the simple math that proves the unaffordability of today’s
safety net programs, or all the government we now have. We will fall
for the con job that says we can just plow ahead and someone else will
pick up the tab. We will allow ourselves to be pitted one against the
other, blaming our neighbor for troubles worldwide trends or our own
government has caused.
“2012 must be the year we prove the doubters wrong. The year we strike
out boldly not merely to avert national bankruptcy but to say to a new
generation that America is still the world’s premier land of
opportunity. Republicans will speak for those who believe in the
dignity and capacity of the individual citizen; who believe that
government is meant to serve the people rather than supervise them; who
trust Americans enough to tell them the plain truth about the fix we
are in, and to lay before them a specific, credible program of change
big enough to meet the emergency we are facing.
“We will advance our positive suggestions with confidence, because we
know that Americans are still a people born to liberty. There is
nothing wrong with the state of our Union that the American people,
addressed as free-born, mature citizens, cannot set right. Republicans
in 2012 welcome all our countrymen to a program of renewal that
rebuilds the dream for all, and makes our ‘city on a hill’ shine once
again.”
Read the text, see the video and get links to other articles, include
Pres. Obama’s State of the Union address by clicking here
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