Op-Ed: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Biden should be honest about Obama’s record
By: Ron Johnson
This Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden will campaign in Green Bay. His job is not an enviable one. He’s tasked with the role of explainer, of feeling your pain. And unfortunately, in the Obama economy, there’s a lot of explaining to do – a lot of pain to feel.
Vice President Biden is known for being a straight shooter. Earlier this summer, he noted at a campaign event that for many Americans, the economy felt like “a depression.” That is, of course, true. For the 23 million Americans who can’t find work, this does indeed feel like a depression, and the fact that unemployment has hovered above 8% since the beginning of President Barack Obama’s term doesn’t help. Neither do sinking wages or anemic economic growth.
But in making that statement, Biden likely strayed from the Obama campaign talking points. After all, President Obama’s narrative is that it could be worse. That’s what he’s trying to convince voters this election cycle. He doesn’t want to wallow in the tough details of the present. He’d rather move “forward,” which is to say, away from his record.
We will hear a lot from Biden this weekend, but there is one thing we probably won’t hear from him: We won’t hear real plans to revive the middle class in this country, because he and the president have no plan. The Obama administration has exhausted its hand. They’ve done what liberal politicians do. They spent money we don’t have, they grew government (Obamacare), they wasted time and money (the “stimulus”), and inhibited energy independence (rejecting the Keystone pipeline).
It didn’t work, and that has been devastating for people across the country. It’s not just the millions of Americans who cannot find jobs. It is also families who are slipping into poverty, and young people whose lives seem to be stuck in place because they can’t get that first job.
Americans have always been a risk-taking people. We’re willing to bet on tomorrow because we think it’ll be better than today. It’s this kind of faith that makes our country great and our society one of extraordinary opportunities. Students take out loans to go to college and make a better life for themselves. Entrepreneurs invest countless hours in building a new business.
Under Obama, that optimism is receding. New business start-ups have fallen to the lowest level in decades. Students graduate college only to experience crushing student loan debt and fewer jobs. It’s no wonder why. Obama is willing to tell business owners that they didn’t build their businesses, and that same anti-business attitude runs through his policies. That’s not a way to create jobs, and it’s certainly not what people had in mind four years ago when President Obama promised hope and change.
And that’s not something that the vice president should ignore. Voters in Wisconsin deserve solutions to the challenges our country faces. We’re not looking for more excuses or fancy rhetoric.
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan offer a different approach. They know that Americans are looking for leadership that will confront our troubles head-on. They have a plan to restore the middle class in this country by creating 12 million jobs. At a time when we need levelheaded problem-solving, that’s precisely what they’ll deliver.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
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