01/24/2012 Mitch Daniels in response to President Obama's 2012 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."
