FULL TEXT: Mitt Romney Response to State of the Union Address

(Editor's Note: Mitt Romney is the only GOP Presidential candidate to deliver a speech responding to the State of the Union address.  It is reprinted in full below.)

From MittRomney.com

Mitt Romney today delivered prebuttal remarks to President Obama’s State of the Union Address in Tampa, Florida. The following remarks were prepared for delivery.

Thank you. It’s good to be in the Sunshine State. It breaks my heart to visit plants like this one.
In 2008, this plant closed because of the economic downturn. In a normal recovery under strong leadership, it could now be full of workers.

Here in Florida, people used to wake up and look forward to a hard day’s work and a good, honest wage. The money they earned helped support families and build communities. Today too many factory floors are silent, warehouses are deserted, corporate offices are empty, and real estate endeavors are abandoned. Floridians are struggling to find a job, keep a home, and raise a family.
As I’ve traveled across America, I’ve heard similar stories in virtually every corner of this country. High unemployment and record home foreclosures. Debt that’s too high and opportunities that are too few. This is the real state of our union. But you won’t hear stories like these in President Obama’s address tonight. The unemployed don’t get invitations to sit with the First Lady.

Instead, tonight, the President will do what he does best. He will give a nice speech with a lot of memorable phrases. But he won’t give you the hard numbers.

Like 9.9 – that’s the unemployment rate in this state.

Or 25 percent – that’s the percentage of foreclosed homes in America that are right here in Florida.

Or $15 trillion – that’s the size of our national debt.

Instead, tonight, President Obama will make the opening argument in his campaign against a “Do Nothing Congress.” But, we shouldn’t forget that for two years, this President had a Congress that could do everything he wanted.

With huge Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, President Obama was free to pursue any policy he pleased.

Did he fix the economy?

Did he tackle the housing crisis?

Did he get Americans back to work?

Via: Hawaii Free Press

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[CARTOON] Obama Uses His Pen

Via: California Political Review

FULL TRANSCRIPT: Obama’s 2014 State of the Union address

For those that did not get enough last night

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you so much.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, my fellow Americans, today in America, a teacher spent extra time with a student who needed it and did her part to lift America's graduation rate to its highest levels in more than three decades.

An entrepreneur flipped on the lights in her tech startup and did her part to add to the more than 8 million new jobs our businesses have created over the past four years. (Applause.)

An autoworker fine-tuned some of the best, most fuel-efficient cars in the world and did his part to help America wean itself off foreign oil.

A farmer prepared for the spring after the strongest five-year stretch of farm exports in our history.

A rural doctor gave a young child the first prescription to treat asthma that his mother could afford. (Applause.) A man took the bus home from the graveyard shift, bone-tired but dreaming big dreams for his son. And in tight-knit communities all across America, fathers and mothers will tuck in their kids, put an arm around their spouse, remember fallen comrades and give thanks for being home from a war that after twelve long years is finally coming to an end. (Applause.)

(The Fix: Five thoughts on Obama’s speech)

Tonight this chamber speaks with one voice to the people we represent: It is you, our citizens, who make the state of our union strong. (Applause.)

Via: Washington Post

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[VIDEO] Rand Paul Delivers Response to 2014 State of the Union

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) delivered his own response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union tonight, Tuesday, January 28th after Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers delivered her official GOP response and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)delivered the official tea party response. Paul gave the tea party response in 2013, but decided to give his own, unaffiliated speech this year.

Via: Mediaite.com

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[VIDEO] Tea Party Response To 2014 State Of The Union Delivered By Mike Lee

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee is set to be the face of the national tea party Tuesday night when he delivers the movement's response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech.

Excerpts of his speech show Lee will pin the widening wealth gap on the president's policies and tout the ideas of a new generation of leaders including himself and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

"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," Lee plans to say. "We are facing an inequality crisis — one to which the president has paid lip-service, but seems uninterested in truly confronting or correcting."

Obama plans to use the State of the Union to announce executive actions to raise the minimum wage for new federal contracts, help the long-term unemployed find work and expand job-training programs.

Via: Huffington Post

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[VIDEO] Official Republican Response to 2014 State of the Union

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) delivered the official Republican response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union tonight, Tuesday, January 28th immediately following the president’s speech. Rodgers was the first woman to deliver the official GOP response in more than 10 years.

Via: You Tube

Brown’s State of the State: It’s Morning in California

The theme of President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign was: It’s Morning in America. He won 49 states, losing only rival Walter Mondale’s native Minnesota.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s State of the State address this morning kicked off a similar theme in what effectively was his re-election pitch. He didn’t imitate Reagan and say, exactly, “It’s Morning in California.” But the meaning still was there. The governor enthused:

“What a comeback it is. A million new jobs since 2010, a budgetary surplus in the billions and a minimum wage rising to $10 an hour! 

“This year, Californians have a lot to be proud of. For a decade, budget instability was the order of the day. A lethal combination of national recessions, improvident tax cuts and too much spending created a financial sink hole that defied every effort to climb out. But three years later, here we are – with state spending and revenues solidly balanced, and more to come.”

Of course things are better than when he took office three years ago to clean up the wreckage of the disastrous Schwarzenegger administration. But unemployment in California remains stubbornly high, at 8.5 percent, sixth worst in the country; and well above such rivals as Texas at 6.1 percent and Florida at 6.4 percent. Both those states lack a state income tax, compared to the hefty top California rate of 13.3 percent because of Brown’s Proposition 30 tax increase.

The increase in the minimum wage Brown touted also likely will kill jobs, making unemployment worse.

And a November study by the U.S. Census Bureau found that, when California’s sky-high cost of living was figured into calculations, the state suffered the country’s worst poverty rate.

Via: California Political Review

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ObamaCare D-Day in March

A document coming from the administration has recently come to light that discloses the entire ObamaCare program is in jeopardy of collapse.  Of course, the White House did not inform the American people of this prospect but was compelled to post the news on a federal website -- away from the inquiring minds of millions of Americans who may suffer even more from ObamaCare.  So much for Barack Obama's boast that his administration would be the most transparent in history.

While the web portal of Healthcare.Gov has received a lot of attention, the true problem lies like an iceberg underneath the public face of the website.  This is the "back end" of the website: the part that transmits information to insurance companies.

There have been scattered reports that there has been "a failure to communicate" between the portal, the insurance companies, and the government, but the scope and the severity of the problem has been barely covered.  The administration and its flacks have routinely dismissed previous problems as "glitches" (see this Monty Python "Just a flesh wound" skit as symbolic of this Pollyannaish strategy), but will have a tougher time downplaying this man-made disaster in the making.

From the non-partisan The Hill in a column titled Document: ObamaCare contractor faces mid-March deadline or disaster:

If the ObamaCare contractor brought on last week to fix the back-end of the HealthCare.gov portal doesn't finish the build-out by mid-March the healthcare law will be jeopardized, according to a procurement document posted on a federal website.

It says insurers could be bankrupt and the entire healthcare industry threatened if the build out is not completed....

"There is limited time to build this functionality and failure to deliver...by mid-March 2014 will result in financial harm to the government," the document says.

"If this functionality is not complete by mid-March 2014, the government could make erroneous payments to providers and insurers," it continues.  "Additionally, without a Financial Management platform that accounts for enrollments and associated program costs that integrates with the existing CMS Accounting platform, the entire healthcare reform program is jeopardized."

Many of those who have signed up for ObamaCare are eligible for federal subsidies, which the government pays directly to the insurers.  The document says that failure to complete the project by mid-March can result in "inaccurate issuance of payments to health plans which could seriously put them at financial risk; potentially leading to their default and disrupting continued services and coverage to consumers."

Via: American Thinker
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Grieving Father Receives OfficeMax Mailer Addressed ‘Daughter Killed in Car Crash’

Mike Seay of Antioch Illinois received a mailer from OfficeMax recently, one of the many random pieces of mail that get slid through the slot every day. But something was very wrong with this one: it was addressed to “Mike Seay, Daughter Killed in Car Crash or Current Business.”

Seay’s 17-year-old daughter Ashley was killed in a car crash last year.

“Why would they have that type of information?” Seay asked. “What purpose does it serve anybody to know that? And how much other types of other information do they have if they have that on me, or anyone else? And how do they use that, what do they use that for?”

Seay contacted the manager of OfficeMax’s call center, and eventually received a statement from the company:

“We are deeply sorry that Mr. Seay and his family received this mailing from us, and we are reaching out to Mr. Seay to convey our sincerest apologies on this unfortunate matter. This mailing is a result of a mailing list rented through a third-party provider. We have reached out to the third-party mailing list provider to research what happened. Based on a preliminary investigation today we believe this to be an inadvertent error; and we are continuing the investigation.”

This is all the more reason to do away with mailers entirely.

Via: Mediaite.com

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Woman Spent Six Weeks Trying to Get Out of Obamacare Insurance

A Missouri woman spent six weeks trying to unenroll from Obamacare using its “navigators” and online help.

Lesli Hill was stuck talking to multiple Obamacare navigators who would transfer her calls over the month-and-a-half time period, Fox News reported. After being deferred to multiple navigators, both online and by phone, Hill drove to her insurance company in Kansas City to deal with the problem.

Hill’s experience stands as a cautionary tale to anyone who, for whatever reason, is trying to bow out of insurance they purchased on the exchanges. Hill’s troubles started last fall, after the high-risk pool coverage she had was discontinued due to the health law. For lack of options, she went on the exchange and bought a policy with a $950-a-month premium. [..]

However, shortly afterward Hill, 62, learned she could once again purchase an individual plan — with better benefits — outside the exchange. She checked with Blue Cross Blue Shield in early December and was told she’d have to cancel her ObamaCare plan first. [...]

Hill first tried the HealthCare.gov help line, and “literally was on hold for several hours a day,” she said. After multiple attempts, without much luck, she tried the online chat. She was redirected back to the help line. The “script” that operators were reading from did not seem to address how someone could actually cancel a plan. 

ViA WFB

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