Lee’s Tea Party Response to State of the Union calls for ‘fixing a broken government’

By Donlyn Turnbull

President Obama delivered his fifth State of the Union address calling for an upcoming “year of action.” However, Sen. Mike Lee (R) of Utah, who offered the official Tea Party response, spoke of the President’s inability to find real solutions, stating the President is offering more empty words to very real issues.

“Today, Americans know in their hearts that something is wrong,” Lee said. “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.”

During Lee’s rebuttal, he voiced the increased frustration among Americans with “an ever-growing government that somehow thinks it is okay to lie to, spy on and even target its own citizens.” Lee mentioned the first tea party over 240 years ago in Boston and explained “those early patriots moved on from Boston and moved past their protest against the government they didn’t want. They marched forward on a road toward the kind of government they did want.”

Lee called for similar solutions for modern times by not just protesting but taking action and not “just by cutting big government, but by fixing a broken government.” He said all of the blame cannot be placed solely on the current administration but claimed the “Republican Establishment…can be just as out-of-touch as the Democratic Establishment.”

With the current administration’s ever-increasing size of government and where now 6 of the 10 wealthiest counties are all suburbs of DC, Lee says, “it takes rights and opportunities away from the American people and gives them instead to politicians, bureaucrats, and special interests.”

Lee listed the “real inequality” occurring in our country through different avenues like favoring partisan donors, the possibility of bailing out insurance companies and changing laws without congressional approval. But the greatest danger of inequality is what Lee referenced as the “inequality Godzilla,” ObamaCare.
Lee stressed the damage from ObamaCare “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.”

In offering conservative solutions to the healthcare crisis, Lee suggests finding a balance. “We can’t just return to the old system,” Lee said. “Healthcare policy used to give too much power to insurance companies; ObamaCare now gives far too much power to government. We know that real reform will put healthcare dollars and decisions where they belong, in the hands of patients and families and their doctors and nurses.”

He continued to focus on positive real solutions being offered including some bi-partisan efforts like the reform of the criminal justice system along side Sen. Rand Paul and “some of the most liberal Democrats in Congress.” He also spoke of his own efforts and action through introducing a bill to help middle class families through a more simplified tax code.

“Our goal should be an America where everyone has a fair chance to pursue happiness – and find it,” Sen. Lee said. “That’s what it looks like when protest grows into reform.”