POTUS: Doing What He Does Best, Campaigning

Washington D.C.—Tonight, Congressman Tom Marino (PA-10) issued the following statement after President Obama delivered his final State of the Union address to Congress:

“What I heard tonight was more of the same. The President got back on the stump and turned the spotlight on himself. Aside from his indignant tone, it seemed as if the President merely came to rewrite his record and further divide the American electorate.

Unfortunately, he has not learned very much. On the domestic front, his policies have prohibited job creators from hiring new employees. For seven years he directed the agencies under his control to impose new regulations on industry and small business. Those regulatory costs were passed onto the consumers. Costs of living and doing business went up not to mention the costs of healthcare.

When he was presented with the facts showing the damage his regulatory agenda had done, he simply dismissed calls for reform. Instead he called for the all too familiar, but never proven, liberal formula of tax, regulate, spend and repeat.

The people of Pennsylvania’s Tenth District know that is no way grow the economy and expand opportunity – the American people know that too. Instead, President Obama sought to pit Americans against one another. He consistently highlighted an ‘us versus them’ attitude. He was a divider, not a uniting figure.

Abroad, his policies were disastrous. The list of blunders, embarrassments and failures is long. From Iran to Iraq to Russia to North Korea to our own southern border, President Obama chose ideology rather than to face hard realities – but tonight he ignored those realities and sought to rewrite history.

While he soaked-up the spotlight one last time during his Presidency, ISIS continues to spread, the death toll is on the rise and the terror has reached our homeland. He has still not provided a plan to rally our allies and partners with mutual interests and kill every last one of ISIS’s fighters. Instead, he relied more upon strongly-worded letters from the United Nations than on the full force of the American military. As President, he will not get a free pass to wage war without a clear plan for ultimate victory.

Given all we have seen throughout his time in the Oval Office, this speech was more about correcting his record, protecting his legacy and setting the stage for his supposed relevance in the upcoming election. It was not what I wanted to hear or hoped to hear but it is, ultimately, what I expected.

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