Statement by Newt Gingrich in Response to State of the Union

Coral Gables, FL — Newt Gingrich released the following statement responding to President Obama's State of the Union address:

 

We have a crisis of work in this country and tonight President Obama proposed nothing in the way of policy changes that will get us to robust job creation and dramatic economic growth.

 

Instead, the president described his conviction that his big government is built to last and should be paid for with higher taxes.

 

But bigger government and higher taxes will not lead to jobs and growth. Bigger government and higher taxes will instead lead to more people on food stamps, a situation which the President and his party defend as a fair outcome.

 

Here we have to confront the truth about President Obama.  Economic growth and prosperity is not really at the top of his agenda. He will always prefer a food stamp economy to a paycheck economy and call it fair.

 

For the president and a large part of the political class, it's about their power, their right to rule.  They just want to take money from Joe the Plumber — the small business people who make over 90 percent of the new jobs -- and redistribute it to the government bureaucracy and their political friends and allies.  That's why so much of that nearly trillion-dollar stimulus didn't create jobs but just went into the pockets of special interests who support President Obama and the leadership of the Democratic Party.

 

No better example of this exists than in the crisis of American energy. President Obama and his political allies — not of few of whom love living in energy inefficient houses or driving gas-guzzling luxury vehicles — openly admit they want gas prices to remain high so that the rest of America will learn to live more modestly. They think it's good for the rest of us.  Only recently, the president canceled the Keystone XL Pipeline that would have created countless new jobs and helped America on the way to energy independence because he wanted to appease the far left of his party.  And yet not a single word on the Keystone XL pipeline tonight.

 

To create jobs and growth in this country, we must start with dramatic tax reform that lowers taxes and maximizes capital investment and job creation. We must return to a dollar as good as gold whose purchasing power is the same in thirty years as it is today.  We must dramatically expand American energy production. We must have smarter regulation at the same time we abolish destructive and costly regulatory systems beginning with Obamacare,Dodd-Franks, and Sarbanes-Oxley. And finally, unlike the current administration, we must have faith in job creators. 

 

With these policies the state of the union will be much better.  They will create an explosion in job creation and lead to robust economic growth and a return to prosperity.  Furthermore, a paycheck economy will put us on a path to balanced budgets and paying down our national debt.