Iowa College Republicans Respond to State of the Union Address

Last night President Obama gave his third, and likely final, State of the Union address. Rather than discussing substantive reforms to solve our nation’s economic troubles, Obama chose once again to waste an hour of our country’s time with campaign slogans and empty promises. The President should know by now that the American people are not looking for another four years of rhetoric; they are demanding results.

Today, Obama returns Iowa, the state where young people catapulted him to the White House. He returns to a much different Iowa than four years ago. Today those same young people are finishing college and about to enter an Obama economy where nearly half of those under 30 cannot find a job. Four short years ago, young Iowans welcomed Senator Obama to the state with optimism, but today they welcome President Obama with cynicism and diminished opportunity.

Since his election, Iowa’s Governor Terry Branstad has taken the opposite path of the president. Soft on rhetoric and strong on results, our Republican Governor with our Republican controlled House boldly passed a balanced budget last year despite a billion dollar budget gap. Unlike Washington, Iowa’s government has responded to the millions of voices demanding our elected officials live up to their promises and confront our problems directly and honestly.

In contrast, President Obama has been largely successful in managing our nation’s decay while placing the blame on everyone else. Last night, whether by unattached ignorance or willful deception, Barack Obama failed to be honest with the American people by feeding them more empty campaign rhetoric rather than the facts they deserve.

President Obama failed to address the fact that the federal government’s debt is spiraling out of control, under his watch. On Inauguration Day 2009, America had been a country for nearly 233 years and amassed a total debt of $10.6 trillion; three short years later Obama has increased our debt to a staggering $15.2 trillion with no end in sight. Our President watches our debt climb $4.2 billion every day, $175 million every hour, and almost $3 million every minute. Do you truly believe America can endure four more years of such mismanagement?

President Obama failed to discuss the facts of entitlement reform. We cannot make an impact on reducing our debt without bringing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid into the 21st centruy. In just 15 short years, every cent of every tax dollar will be needed to solely fund these programs and interest on the debt. Without reform, these programs will fail. The president has ignored these facts at the chance to demean the previous administration and shrink the responsibility of the job he was hired to do.

President Obama failed to mention the fact that unemployment continues to remain well above 8%. Since Obama took office, America has lost 1.7 million jobs while the percentage of Americans with a job is the lowest in decades. Now, the same young people that turned out in droves for the president in 2008 are now forced to confront their outrageous student loans with even less of an opportunity of gainful employment. Putting Americans back to work is the most imperative ingredient to ensuring America’s future success, and our president continues to be unable, or incapable, of providing solutions.

President Obama spoke of “American-made energy” but failed to mention the fact that he singlehandedly canceled the congressionally approved Keystone XL Pipeline just days prior. In one stroke, President Obama turned his back on tens of thousands of ready-to-work Americans that the pipeline could have immediately employed while deliberately obstructing the will of the Congress. Our president prioritized the minority opinions of the far left, rather than create jobs and secure American energy independence. On top of this, Americans continue to feel the pain of Obama’s energy policies on a daily basis. On Inauguration day 2009, a gallon of regular gasoline cost $1.85; today it is $3.39 – an 83% increase in just three years.

President Obama also failed to note the fact that his third State of the Union marked exactly 1,000 days since the Senate passed a budget. In 2011, it was on the floor of the Democrat controlled Senate that the president’s own budget was unanimously rejected. Obama’s estimated budget deficit this year will once again run more than $1 trillion, further compounding the problems we face as a nation.

Four years ago as a candidate, Barack Obama benefited from making lofty promises without a demonstrable record to the contrary. Today however, his administration’s record stands diametrically opposed to the empty, prepared words he reads from his teleprompter.

The president has, quite simply, made a ad situation worse, and remains unapologetic in asking Americans to condone such degradation. To win reelection, the President must convince the American people to listen to his speeches, instead of watching his actions. He expects Americans to disavow the belief of American greatness while accepting a painful “new normal” of lost opportunity and potential. Our president requests both naivety and ignorance from the American people, and plans to reciprocate with four more years of the same.

The last three years have placed the state of our union in grave condition. Thankfully, Americans have the chance to right this course in November by demanding accountability and renouncing complacency.

Natalie Ginty
Chairwoman of the Iowa Federation of College Republicans

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College Republicans Attacked for Supporting the Troops

This past Saturday, College Republicans from across the state braved the rain and cold to converge in Des Moines to box donations for Iowa soldiers deployed in Afghanistan. For weeks they fundraised independently on their campuses to buy socks, wet wipes, shampoo, lip balm and much more in an effort to make our brave men and women overseas slightly more comfortable this holiday season. The Iowa State College Republicans received second place overall in the most items fundraised by any chapter, mainly due to the efforts of ISUCR Jeremy Freeman.

The Iowa Federation of College Republicans has made donating to Iowa’s troops a holiday tradition for the last five years with the firm belief that these annual acts of appreciation should always be ones of duty, and never self-aggrandizing. Yet, an ISU English Lecturer found the CR’s acts callous enough to insult and demean the efforts of Jeremy and Iowa’s CRs publicly in the Iowa State Daily on Monday.

Through his blatant disregard for our nation’s heroes overseas, Walker’s letter exemplifies the intimidation tactics used by the left to bully young conservatives out of any form of activism. Sadly, yet ever more predictably, this response comes from a state-employed educator at one of Iowa’s public universities. This past spring, Iowa College Republicans faced similar vitriol from a tenured Professor of Gender and Women Studies at the University of Iowa College Republicans who chose to use her position to hurl expletives at young conservatives on campus. Somewhere along the way, our learning institutions have sanctioned the authoritative ridiculing of inquisitive, conservative minds on campus, but to do so while lambasting our troops is truly a new low we cannot accept.

College Republicans will proudly defend those that defend us and will never apologize for supporting the brave American heroes of our military. Most of us involved with this project personally know someone deployed – they are our family, friends and neighbors. We miss them dearly and pray for their safe return. While some may deride our attempt to increase our soldier’s comfort overseas, we sincerely wish there was a way to provide them with more, as they truly deserve.

As Republicans, we believe in initiative, and that it is our duty to help. Rather than ignorantly place our charitable responsibility to nameless government agencies, we choose to individually help with our own time and money to ensure our resources are not diluted. This claim was statistically verified by researcher Arthur C. Brooks in his book, “Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism.” Brooks found that although liberal families incomes average 6% higher than conservative families, it was the latter group that, on average, gave 30% more to charity, in addition to more of their blood and their time.

Regardless of whether it is an election year or not, the members of the Iowa Federation of College Republicans work tirelessly to make their voices heard as they participate in the functions of our democracy we hold dear. A democracy, I remind you, that was given to us on the blood, sweat and sacrifice of our nation’s military members and their families.

Just mere hours after our packages were shipped to Iowa’s waiting troops, IFCR received a Facebook comment from a formerly deployed soldier so eloquent in its brevity,, “You have no idea how much these packages cheer us up when we’re over there.”

Somehow, this sentiment will always mean more to IFCR than any imbecilic, long-winded rant that shamelessly compares a discharged veteran to an aborted fetus.

Regardless of whether the author includes the word “eleemosynary”.

Thank you, TIR, for the continued support. Merry Christmas and May God bless each and every one of our soldiers and their families,

Natalie Ginty
Chair – Iowa Federation of College Republicans

Originally posted in The Iowa Republican on December 6, 2011

Editorial: Obama has let my generation down

By Alex Schriver

Labor Day has come and gone, football is back, the weather is cooler and college students are returning to campus. For many of those students, though, the excitement that should come with the start of a new school year has given way to anxiety over what comes next.

This is President Obama’s legacy and this is what college students, and all young adults, must work to change in 2012.

In 2008, Obama won the millennial demographic — 18- to 29-year-olds — by a stunning 66-to-32 percent margin. But by any measure, young adults are worse off today than they were prior to his election.

Unemployment is perhaps the most glaring problem facing millennials. While the recession has been difficult for everyone, workers aged 16-24 have been hit disproportionately hard. Though young adults represent a mere 13.5 percent of the workforce, they account for 26.4 percent of all unemployed workers. And since workers’ first jobs are crucial training grounds and resume-builders, growing unemployment among young adults will have long-lasting consequences on millennials’ skills and earning power.

Moreover, President Obama has buried millennials beneath a mountain of debt. Even if we set aside costly and ill-conceived policy “one-offs” such as the $787 billion stimulus package, the president has consistently defended the indefensible — the ever-rising level of baseline federal spending. The rising tide of federal spending will ultimately necessitate massive tax hikes, which my generation will bear.

But don’t take it from me. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office’s recently released Long-Term Budget Outlook lays out two possible long-term budget scenarios. Under the so-called “extended baseline scenario,” which assumes that current laws remain unchanged, revenues (that is to say, taxes) would soar to 23 percent of GDP, well above the 18 percent post-World War II average, while the federal debt would reach 84 percent of GDP by 2035, more than double what it was just three years ago.

Under the more plausible “alternative fiscal scenario,” the debt-to-GDP ratio would soar to nearly 190 percent of GDP by 2035, a level that the CBO can only describe as “unsustainable.”

This is the future a second Obama term would relegate us to: reduced prosperity and opportunity and increased taxes and debt.

Despite the grim path they have walked us down, many liberals are attempting to woo millennial voters with promises eerily reminiscent of the ones we heard in 2008. “The 2012 election provides millennials with the opportunity to take control of this debate, pick up where they left off in 2008, and place the country firmly on a path aligned with their own liberal, Democratic beliefs,” write Michael Hais and Morley Winograd in The Huffington Post.

To hear these authors (neither of whom is a millennial) tell it, the 2012 election is about “competing visions” for America — one a hopeful vision in which the federal government plays “a central role in guiding the economy and providing opportunity,” the other dominated by pessimistic “doomsayers and doubters of America’s future.”

But what is “hopeful” about staying on an economic and fiscal course that is so clearly headed towards failure? What is so “pessimistic” about putting forth positive reforms to ensure that our social institutions aren’t destroyed by debt?

To be sure, all of us, Republicans and Democrats, share in our hearts a vision for this world. But Republicans’ hope doesn’t lie in present institutions, it lies in a future in which young adults, unshackled from the weight of Washington, can actually achieve what our social compact has promised for generations: the American dream.

So Mr. Hais and Mr. Winograd were right to say that millennials have the opportunity to take control of this debate. The question should be, given what we know about liberals’ backward-looking vision, do we really want to pick up where we left off in 2008? With the past three years as our guide, it is safe to say that the Democratic Party is no longer the party of hope and change.

Alex Schriver is the national chairman of the College Republican National Committee.

Originally published on The Daily Caller on 09.13.11.