JOHN BOEHNER

The Obama Administration’s response to the results of the Massachusetts special election is a new PR campaign, and a hastily put-together one at that.  The New York Times says President Obama’s State of the Union address will now focus on “creating good jobs, addressing the deficit, helping the middle class and changing Washington,” with an accompanying slogan – “a new foundation” – to boot.  But no tacking, no pivoting, no reset-button-pushing, and no speechmaking can paper over the broken status quo President Obama and Washington Democrats have come to represent.  The people have spoken:

• WHERE ARE THE JOBS?  Roughly three million Americans have lost their jobs since President Obama signed into law a trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ with promises that it would create jobs ‘immediately’ and keep unemployment below eight percent.  Joblessness remains at double-digits and unemployment for younger workers is more than 25 percent.  Today, a majority of Americans oppose the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ and even more say Washington has wasted taxpayer dollars on the program. (CNN, 1/24/10, CNN, 1/25/10)
  
  

• RED INK AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE.  Under President Obama, who once pledged to go through the budget “line by line,” the federal government has gone on an unprecedented spending binge and is now operating on a fiscal blueprint that doubles the national debt in five years and triples it in ten.  The budget deficit for the first month of fiscal year 2010 was greater than the budget deficit for the entire 2007 fiscal year.  Things have gotten so out of hand that  Washington Democrats want to increase the national debt limit by nearly $2 trillion to make room for more wasteful government spending.  Today, a majority of Americans say President Obama is “fiscally irresponsible” and more than six in 10 disapprove of his handling of the budget deficit. (Quinnipiac, 1/13/10, CNN, 1/12/10)
  
  

• LEAVING MIDDLE-CLASS FAMILIES HIGH AND DRY.  If there’s one thing the American people want out of health care reform, it’s lower costs, but the government takeover of health care President Obama is proposing would actually raise costs, according to the government’s own experts.  (The Hill, 1/9/10) The Obama Administration is also committed to passing a ‘cap-and-trade’ national energy tax that would, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, create “significant” job losses. (The Washington Post, 10/15/09)  While middle-class families and small businesses ask “where are the jobs,”  the Obama Administration is calling for Congress to act on the job-killing “card check” bill favored by union bosses.  Today, a majority of Americans say President Obama does not share their views on the issues they care about and even more say he has not done enough for middle-class families and small businesses. (Gallup, 1/22/10, CBS, 1/18/10)
  
  

• KICKBACKS, SWEETHEART DEALS, AND BUSINESS AS USUAL.  It’s fitting that the last time Washington Democrats held any kind of formal health care talks behind closed doors, they were hashing out the details of a sweetheart deal with union bosses.  It was just the latest in a series of kickback and payoffs Democrats have devised to try and jam through a costly government takeover of health care.  To make these deals, President Obama shut the American people out, ignoring his own pledge to make the health care talks public and broadcast them on C-SPAN.  It is this kind of arrogance that the American people have rejected: seven in 10 Americans say Democrats’ loss of their 60-seat supermajority in the Senate is “good for the country.” (CNN, 1/25/10)
  
  

REPUBLICANS HAVE PROPOSED BETTER SOLUTIONS TO ADDRESS THE CHALLENGES WORKING FAMILIES ARE FACING:

• Create jobs by jumpstarting small business growth and restoring confidence in our economy;
  
  
• Lower health care premiums by up to 10 percent and consistently reduce federal spending over the next two decades;
  
  
• Make Washington do more with less with a responsible budget blueprint that makes the tough spending choices others just talk about;
  
  
• Clean up our environment and meet the nation’s energy needs by employing an “all of the above” strategy;
  
  
• Get the federal government out of the bailout business;
  
  
• Protect responsible homeowners and revitalize America’s housing market;
  
  
• Help rebuild Americans’ savings, whether it’s for retirement, college, or buying a home;
  
  
• And bring much-needed transparency to the legislative process so we can accomplish all these goals with the open and honest government taxpayers deserve.