Senator Mike Lee Gives the Tea Party Response to the State of the Union.

Tea Party Response to the State of the Union. By Senator Mike Lee. Video. Real Clear Politics, January 28, 2014. YouTube. Text at PolicyMic.

Six reasons why Mike Lee’s tea party response to the State of the Union was amazing. By Patrick Howley. The Daily Caller, January 28, 2014.




Lee:

Today, Americans know in their hearts that something is wrong. Much of what is wrong relates to the sense that the “American Dream” is falling out of reach for far too many of us. We are facing an inequality crisis — one to which the President has paid lip-service, but seems uninterested in truly confronting or correcting.

 

This inequality crisis presents itself in three principal forms:

 

– immobility among the poor, who are being trapped in poverty by big-government programs;

 

– insecurity in the middle class, where families are struggling just to get by and can’t seem to get ahead;

 

– and cronyist privilege at the top, where political and economic insiders twist the immense power of the federal government to profit at the expense of everyone else.

 

To be fair, President Obama and his party did not create all of these problems. The Republican Establishment in Washington can be just as out-of-touch as the Democratic Establishment.

 

However, tonight, as on numerous occasions of late, the President’s lofty rhetoric ignored the fact that his administration continues to leave poor and middle-class families further behind, while he and his allies insist that the real problem is “inequality” itself.

 

But where does this new inequality come from? From government — every time it takes rights and opportunities away from the American people and gives them instead to politicians, bureaucrats, and special interests.

 

Inequality – real inequality - is trapping poor children in failing schools to benefit bureaucrats and union bosses. It’s penalizing low-income parents for getting married, or getting better jobs.

 

It’s guaranteeing insurance companies taxpayer bailouts if Obamacare cuts into their profits.

 

Inequality is blocking thousands of middle-class jobs in the energy industry as a favor to partisan donors and radical environmental activists.

 

Inequality is denying viable, unborn children any protection under the law, while exempting unsanitary, late-term abortion clinics from basic safety standards.

 

It’s denying citizens their right to define marriage in their states as traditionally or as broadly as their diverse values dictate.

 

It’s the federal government hurting rural communities, especially in the west, by controlling and mismanaging public lands.

 

It’s changing laws without congressional approval, and spying on American citizens without constitutional authority.

 

And of course, Obamacare – all by itself – is an inequality Godzilla that has robbed working families of their insurance, their doctors, their wages and their jobs. Many Americans are now seeing why some of us fought so hard to stop this train-wreck over the last four years.

 

Government-driven inequality is the reason why, as hard-working families across the country struggle to make ends meet, six of the ten wealthiest counties in America are now suburbs of Washington, D.C.