Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty:

“As you know, President Obama is coming to Minnesota today for several stops and of course we welcome him to Minnesota but it is also an opportunity to talk about the abysmal impact that his policies have had on the American job market and free enterprise and the most recent measure of that of course, is the awful jobs numbers that came out this morning. The nation adding on 69,000 in the last month, dramatically below even the modest expectations that people had hoped for in those jobs numbers this month. And what we see is a president whose policies are hostile to free enterprise, are hostile to job creators and are not only not sparking the kind of economic recovery at the pace that we had hoped for and need in America, but we are seeing the voices and perspectives of people who are credible established business leaders increasingly calling the president out and holding him accountable.

“In an interesting twist, the CEO of Honeywell one of the facilities the president is going to visit today in Minnesota, has specifically cited the president’s inability and a lack of progress in tackling the deficit and debt in this country as a leading factor for why the economy is not recovering and why it is being stifled. More specifically, David Cote, who is the CEO of Honeywell said in a recent interview that the debt structure and burden in this country could be the ‘seeds of the next recession’ and he also went on to say that it is the number one thing that he thought could be done to ignite and send a strong signal to get the economy moving again. And unfortunately President Obama has utterly failed in tackling the debt and the deficit in this country. He came into office and since then has increased the debt by five trillion dollars that’s a nearly 50 percent increase during his time as president. It is the most rapid rise of the national debt during any president in the history of the country he has had the three largest deficits in a row, in the history of the country and he came into office in the early days and months as president and said he was going to cut the budget deficit in half and in fact he has nearly tripled it during his time in office. It’s another one of his broken promises during office. Those are all interesting statistics but when you come to a state and you go to a visit to highlight your accomplishments or your perspective as president and the CEO of the place that you are visiting takes a contrary point that is noteworthy obviously for a variety of reasons.

“But beyond just the debt and the deficit and we have a number of other concerns related to the economy and jobs, the president has no plan to deal with these issues. You can’t find him in terms of any proposal to meaningfully tackle the debt and deficit issues. He’s not been available , not presented anything in terms of entitlement reform, one of the most pressing issues in the country. But fundamentally, his policies, his approach, have been hostile to job creators, they have been hostile to free enterprise in this country, even Democrats as we saw with the Bain attacks that have backfired have been uncomfortable and critical to the president’s hostility towards free enterprise and the private economy in this country and it’s not working.

“We’ve had enough. The American people are hurting they are tired of waiting for the fulfillment of his broken promises they now realize that his misguided approach and his misguided agenda is not helping the country or the economy recover and in fact it’s headed in the wrong direction. So, it’s time for President Obama to go. His visit to Minnesota today is an opportunity to highlight these issues and there’s no better highlight than the CEO of the very company he is going to be visiting being directly critical of his failure to address and tackle the debt and the deficit in this country.”

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