With President Obama laying out some of his goals for the future in his sixth State of the Union address, not all the members of Congress are falling in line with the president’s proposals.
“If you listen to him, the theme is always similar. He always wants to add more programs,” U.S. Rep. Phil Roe (R-TN) said. “He always wants to expand government.”
An ever-expanding federal government is not in the best interest of Americans, Roe said.
“If you ask the people back home in East Tennessee, I bet you no one would say our government is too small,” Roe said. “I think before we expand the government we need to learn to run our government better.”
One such expansion Roe pointed to is an initiative recently announced by the president to create a federal program to pay for community college or technical school for all high school graduates. The program would be similar to the Tennessee Promise program launched in 2014 by Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam.
While providing education to high school graduates for free is a wonderful idea, Roe said it isn’t something the federal government should be rushing into.
“What I think he needs to do is wait and see how the program does in Tennessee,” Roe said. “I think we should let Tennessee be the pilot program for this.”
The congressman also noted that Tennessee had funds set aside from lottery money to fund the Tennessee Promise program. The federal government doesn’t have funding set aside for the establishment of such a program on a national scale, Roe said, adding that creating the program would mean the federal government would have to come up with funding through tax revenue.
Tennessee had the financial stability to implement Tennessee Promise, Roe said, funding the program without taking on any additional debt while maintaining a balanced budget. Other states and the federal government could learn from the money management practiced by Tennessee, he said.
“We have the lowest per capita debt in the country out of all the states,” Roe said. “We may not be a rich state but we know how to balance our budget and live within our means in Tennessee.”
Implementing a program like this on the national level is “not living within our means,” Roe added.
One thing Roe had hoped to hear in the speech, he said, was a commitment from the president to work with Congress instead of against it. Roe said he had hoped the president would extend the proverbial olive branch but that does not appear to be the case.
“A few years ago he said elections have consequences, and he was right,” Roe said. “In 2014 we had elections and they had consequences, and now Republicans have control of Congress.”
Already, Roe said, President Obama has threatened to veto major projects, such as the Keystone Pipeline.
The Keystone Pipeline project “just makes sense” to Roe, who said he can’t understand why the president opposes a measure that would lower the cost of oil and gasoline for the country.
“It is a bi-partisan bill that will create tens of thousands of jobs,” Roe said. “It will make us less dependant on Middle-Eastern oil.”
Two things Roe said he wished the President would have focused on more are jobs and national security, issues Roe says are of major concern to all Americans.