Rep. Michele Bachmann’s alternate response to the State of the Union will hit President Obama where it hurts: the economy and jobs.
In excerpts of her speech, to be aired after the official Republican response by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Bachmann attacks the president for failing to rein in government spending, balance the budget, and reduce unemployment.
“After the $700 billion bailout, the trillion-dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks that the President signed, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money we don’t have,” she will say.
“But, instead of cutting, we saw an unprecedented explosion of government spending and debt at President Obama’s direction; unlike anything we have seen in the history of our country.”
The congresswoman from Minnesota also attacks cap-and-trade, talks energy policy, and calls for decreased regulation.
“For two years President Obama made promises,” she will say. “He claimed that he would find solutions to fix our economy and help create jobs.”
Offering her “suggestions” to the president on how to make that happen, Bachmann will say he should “stop the EPA from imposing a job-destroying cap-and-trade system,” and calls for a “Balanced Budget Amendment,” as well as decreased economic regulation.
She will also take on the issue of energy policy, suggesting “an all-of-the-above energy policy” that would simultaneously “increase American energy production, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, reduce the price of gas at the pump, and create good-paying jobs in the U.S.”
All roads lead back to jobs.
Bachmann will also address the issue of shrinking government.
“We must work hard to dismantle the massive government expansion that has happened over the past two years,” she will say.
Bachmann’s announcement last week that she would provide an alternate response to the State of the Union address made waves, with some suggesting that it shows a rift in the Republican Party.
“I think it shows the deep divisions that exist, that the Republicans are not able to be on the same page,” said Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schulz Tuesday on CNN, calling it “shades of things to come as they move forward.”
But Republicans have defended Bachmann’s speech.
“I think you get a variety of opinions and all Republicans aren’t the same, but I don’t see it as trying to usurp somebody else’s prerogative,” Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul told CNN. “I think one main Republican message, but other voices as well.”
Rep. Joe Barton, an early member of the House Tea Party Caucus that Bachmann founded, defended Bachmann’s right to give the speech.
“I think the more diversity of opinion that you get from the conservative community the better,” he told The Daily Caller.
Moreover, Barton said that he expected the two speeches to be “more similar than dissimilar,” calling them “two slightly different view points of the same thing.”
