Congressman Phil Gingrey, MD Georgia's 11th district

In last night’s State of the Union address, President Obama laid out his coming “year of action.” He has advertised that he will use his “pen and phone” to reverse the current ‘stalemate’ culture of Congress in order to speed up economic growth, create opportunity, and reduce health care costs.

I, and the rest of my Republican colleagues, agree that reaching these goals is critical to moving our nation forward. But when it comes right down to it, President Obama’s policy ideas and track-record of ineffective leadership simply aren’t going to put us on track to economic recovery.

And it’s not just that they aren’t helping us, they’re actually making things worse.

This administration’s broken promises have added to the debt, burdened job-creators with countless regulations, increased health care costs, and forced millions to lose their coverage.

More troubling though, is that, year-after-year, President Obama continues to trumpet his so-called “offers” to reach across the aisle, and ‘eagerness to work with Congress.’ Though he intends for the American people to see him extending an olive branch, these recycled talking points are nothing more than political gamesmanship.

In last night’s speech, President Obama made clear his intentions to bypass the authority of Congress, and “take steps without legislation” to enact even more of his already failed initiatives.

Unilateral, and unbridled, actions like this threaten our country’s most cherished founding principles, and cannot be tolerated.

Americans deserve better. It’s critical that we end big-government overreach, lower taxes, drastically limit spending, and get the government off the backs of our small businesses. 

I’ll also keep working to implement market-centered health care policies that truly lower costs, while allowing medical decisions to take place between patients, their doctors, and their families, rather than be dictated by federal bureaucrats.

In order to have a true “year of action,” House conservatives will continue to fight for commonsense constitutional policies that emphasize individual liberty and reign in President Obama’s rampant abuse of executive power.