NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – A pair of Tennessee congresswomen tore into President Obama’s economic policies on Friday with one asserting that a Democratic spending plan is “off in la-la land.”
Reps. Marsha Blackburn and Diane Black, both Republicans, made separate appearances at the CPAC convention and insisted that the federal government has grown too big and that a significant portion of the population has grown too dependent on Washington’s largesse.
With constituents facing record debt, high unemployment, and a recent tax hike, Blackburn said many are wondering if the nation is ever going to get back on track.
“The government has grown so rapidly and it’s pushing toward being a nanny state and it is making it tough for our hard working taxpayers,” Blackburn said. “What they’re doing is taking away our tools of liberty. They refuse to let us help one another as we have always done because they are so busy meddling and crowding out the private sector.”
The Obama administration, she said, is “really obsessed with implementing big, liberal bad ideas that trap our poor into a system of never ending dependency.” It is, she added, “dividing Americans, robbing people of their human dignity and robbing them of hope.”
It is all, she said, a result of the president’s failed leadership.
“People say they are tired of being broke and they’re tired of seeing this country on the wrong track,” she said.
In order to move the nation forward, Blackburn urged her audience of about 100 to form networks with their friends to “influence the conversation and drive those policies needed to get the nation back on track.”
“We’re not taxed too little – this government spends too much,” she said. “We can’t tax our way back to full employment. The focus should be on how we keep Washington from spending money they do not have for things the American people do not want.”
Black was equally critical, maintaining that “we are at a crossroad of our nation’s history” where “a majority believes the future will not be better for their children or grandchildren and a sense that this century may belong to someone else.”
Obama’s policies represent “an assault on the American dream,” she said, by creating “big government, less freedom and fewer opportunities.”
The administration’s fiscal policies, Black said, are driving up college tuition costs, placing higher education outside the reach of many would-be students. A lot of them are being forced into working two part-time jobs and then have no time for night school “to get ready for tomorrow because they’re working so hard to pay the bills today.”
The national debt, which has reached $16.7 trillion, is an emerging crisis, she said, that represents a regressive tax that hurts low and middle income Americans most of all.
“This is simple math,” she said. “Spending money we don’t have is generational theft. The president needs to recognize that the best investment we can make is for the government to stop spending money we do not have.”
“We must change course while there is still time,” she said.
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