In GOP Response, Daniels Blasts 'Pro-Poverty' Policy

President Obama may be bullish about the state of the union, but he shouldn't be, said Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels in the GOP response. Obama was elected to fix the nation's financial problems, but he's only made them worse, said Daniels. "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." (International Business Times has the text.) Highlights:

• “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.”
• “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 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 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."

(More Mitch Daniels stories.)