WASHINGTON — Republican Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, once touted as a presidential contender himself, ripped into President Obama’s State of the Union Address in the GOP response last night.
Daniels took up the Republican battle cry that Obama is creating class warfare with his tax-reform proposal, which would boost the amount of taxes millionaires pay — in some cases doubling their rates.
“We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have-nots,” Daniels said. “We must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves.”
“No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than it’s constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others,” Daniels added.
The growth of debt under the Obama administration is a danger to the nation, said Daniels, the former head of the Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush.
“If we drift, quarrelling and paralyzed, over a Niagara of debt, we will all suffer regardless of income, race, gender or other category,” Daniels said.
He added said that 2012 should be “the year we strike out boldly, not merely to avert national bankruptcy, but to say to a new generation that America is still the world’s premier land of opportunity.”