Tim Pawlenty’s statement:
President Obama is lecturing the country instead of leading it. He has presided over the largest and most irresponsible run up of debt in our nation’s history, and he now threatens to preside over the first default in U.S. history. Once again, President Obama did not have the courage to offer real solutions to fix runaway debt. Where is his plan to fix Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid? Tonight’s speech was all rhetoric and no results, and is another reason why President Obama needs to be removed from office.
Rick Santorum’s statement:
President Obama said tonight that ‘people are fed up with a town where compromise has become a dirty word,’ but what the people are fed up with is a President who uses class warfare as a crutch to divide rather than focusing on solving the issues affecting each and every American. The fact that President Obama has been shut out by not just Republican but by Democratic congressional leaders is a clear indication that he has become incapable of addressing our nation’s debt crisis. President Obama must throw out the failed economic playbook of raising taxes and recklessly spending tax dollars that he has used for over two years and make the tough choices necessary to bring fiscal sanity back to Washington.
Michele Bachmann’s statement:
Shame on President Obama for casting the American people aside as collateral damage, as he continues his political gamesmanship with the national debt crisis. The problem with the president’s plan is that he’s operating from the wrong assumption — that we need to increase the debt limit to pay for increased spending. Despite what President Obama says, the people of this country understand what raising the debt limit means. It’s the President who doesn’t grasp the magnitude of our national debt; he compares it to ‘a little credit card debt’ when, in fact, our ‘national credit cards’ are maxed out.
President Obama isn’t listening to the American people. Not one person in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina has told me that we need a ‘balanced approach,’ which, of course, is code for higher taxes and spending. Let me be clear: I will not vote to raise the debt limit. The Congress and the President should not raise the debt limit. Rather than scaring seniors and veterans, it’s time to make the tough choices and make the spending cuts necessary to put our nation on the path to prosperity, lower spending and a balanced budget.
Mitt Romney’s tweet:
An historic failure of leadership from @BarackObama, not even @SenatorReid is still talking about tax increases