House Speaker John Boehner echoed many of his Republican colleagues with a statement that decried the address as more of the same from a President that’s never been interested in working with the opposing party.
“The State of the Union is a chance to start anew, but all the President offered tonight is more taxes, more government and more of the same approach that has failed middle-class families,” he said in a statement. “These aren’t just the wrong policies, they’re the wrong priorities: growing Washington’s bureaucracy instead of America’s economy.”
The address did lay out a laundry list of progressive priorities — tax credits for middle class families, paid for by raising taxes on wealthy Americans; hikes in the minimum wage and protections for gay Americans; free community college — most of which had been previewed over the past week and pre-emptively panned by Republicans.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, accused Obama of waging “class warfare” with the policies in Tuesday morning remarks.
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Still, it’s an approach that has Republicans decrying the Obama they say they’ve always known, unwilling to work with them to even broker compromises where they might find agreement.
“He is so detached and uninvolved in the legislative process he just speaks as if he’s on Mt. Olympus saying, ‘if you send this to me I will veto it,'” Cornyn lamented.
“It’s not the recipe for getting anything done.”
