Washington » While President Barack Obama laid out a slew of lofty proposals in his State of the Union on Tuesday night, Utah’s members of Congress weren’t expecting a slew of action.
"I don’t know quite how to say this: It’s like, been there, done that, seen it, heard it before," Rep. Rob Bishop said after Obama’s address. "It was a speech that could have been given by any president going back to Jimmy Carter."
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Sen. Orrin Hatch wasn’t impressed either.
"Speech was a profound disappointment, because we’ve heard this speech and these empty promises before," the senator tweeted.
In an election year, it wasn’t a stretch to see Utah’s Republican members of Congress knock the Democratic president.
But even Utah’s lone Democrat, Rep. Jim Matheson, didn’t see too much of a new vision in the president’s address.
"I don’t know that there is anything new that we haven’t heard before," Matheson said.
That said, Matheson applauded Obama for keeping the focus where it needed to be: jobs and the economy.
Matheson also heralded the president’s call for Democrats and Republicans to find common ground on issues facing the country and to jettison the drama.
"I think the call for people to work together to solve problems was appropriate," Matheson said, noting the dismal approval ratings for Congress. "The leadership of both parties in Congress don’t get it."
Matheson disagreed with Obama’s characterization of how much the government has helped with the oil and gas industry’s production.
"I think there is a lot more that can be done," Matheson said.
Bishop, who has castigated the Obama administration over canceling a lease sale in Utah and for red-tape hurdles, agreed that production may be up, but "we could be doing a whole lot better."
Sen. Mike Lee said he agreed with the president’s call for comprehensive tax reform, for streamlining federal regulations and that a nuclear-armed Iran is "intolerable."
But, Lee said, "that’s about where the warm, fuzzy feelings end. Most of the speech was devoted to expanding the size and scope of the federal government again. ... I wasn’t thrilled with it."
Rep. Jason Chaffetz said Obama continues to blame Congress for impasses that are hurting America’s economic recovery, but that it’s his own administration and party control of the Senate that’s causing the problem.
"I’m glad I was there to see his final State of the Union speech," Chaffetz said, eyeballing a Republican president in his place next year. "It was a populist speech with rhetoric that is simply not true. He’s running out of time and he’s running out of excuses."
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