Patrick McAteer
Politics PA
Republican Govs Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana blasted President Obama for what they called a string of broken promises regarding the U.S. economy during a preemptive rally in Pittsburgh Friday morning.
During the event, which was held at the Allegheny County Soldiers and Sailors Memorial, Jindal and Pawlenty used the latest federal jobs report to attack Obama’s record as President hours before he’s scheduled to hold a campaign event blocks away.
Pawlenty, a former Republican presidential candidate, said Obama’s shifting definition of the individual mandate in the Affordable Healthcare Act, as well as his failed campaign promise of cutting unemployment to 5.6 percent, are a few examples of him misleading the electorate.
“[Obama] has taken ‘hope and change’ and changed it into ‘bait and switch,’” Pawlenty said. “Now he has waffled back and forth on a lot of issues, but he said this yesterday to a local media outlet in Ohio: ‘when you’re the President, your words matter.’”
Although he campaigned on being a champion of the middle class, Pawlenty said Obama’s policies have destroyed small businesses by imposing a new tax — the AHCA’s individual mandate — as a regulation on small businesses.
“When [Obama] comes to Pennsylvania today, and he tries to make a case that it’s working, and you look at the people who are unemployed or underemployed, you don’t have to listen to Barack Obama, or Bobby Jindal or Tim Pawlenty,” Pawlenty said.
Pawlenty also said the EPA under Obama has destroyed jobs in the energy industry as well as driving up energy costs for consumers. He focused on the coal industry in particular, a hot button issue to many southwestern Pennsylvania residents, saying that Obama campaigned on clean coal, but abandoned this after taking office.
Jindal, who many consider a potential future Republican presidential candidate, followed Pawlenty with a impressive oratory performance where he outlined the tenets of “American Exceptionalism,” calling Obama a supporter of the “Occupy Wall Street mentality.”
“You’ve heard of the ‘Occupy Wall Street mentality’; it’s about demonizing those who are successful,” Jindal said. “It’s about dividing us apart from each other. That’s not the America I grew up in.”
Jindal also spoke on the danger of the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare, saying that it could give Congress “unprecedented taxing authority.”
Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Allegheny) also spoke at the event, reiterating many of the points he made during a news conference yesterday morning — including the potential damage to the doctor-patient relationship.
“I’ve always felt in all those years I worked with patients’ rights, and all the time working in hospitals, that the best way to have health care is to have as few barriers between you and your doctor,” Murphy said. “Not one run by the government that’s going to cost us a billion dollars a year, and add billions of dollars in taxes.”
Read more: http://www.politicspa.com/jindal-pawlenty-blast-obama-before-pittsburgh-stop/37716/