Today, the nation's largest taxpayer watchdog group, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), expressed dismay over President Barack Obama's fifth State of the Union address, which was nothing more than a self-congratulatory litany of half-truths that even the Washington Post's Fact-Checkers could not bring themselves to validate, followed by a laundry list of more new spending programs and a complete failure to even utter the words "government waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement."

CAGW had urged President Obama to deliver a "Taxpayers' State of the Union Address" that would focus on eliminating duplicative, mismanaged, and wasteful government programs; decreasing the nation's debt; finally enacting plausible pro-growth economic policies to rev up the private sector and put millions of unemployed Americans back to work; and, working with Congress to pass common-sense, bipartisan bills that have been languishing in limbo, even though much of the legislation is supported by the President. Not only did President Obama fail to address the sorry state of government spending and the debt, he threatened to bypass the legislative branch entirely to expand government by executive fiat.

"The speech was disjointed and uninspiring. The President began with a series of snapshots of everyday Americans going about their daily lives, all activities which he implied were predicated on the good graces of Washington, D.C., as he claimed 'That's what most Americans want, for all of us in this chamber to focus on their lives, their hopes, their aspirations,'" said CAGW President Tom Schatz. "On the contrary, Mr. President: polls indicate that most Americans are more distrustful of government than ever. Taxpayers are sick and tired of Washington's meddling and they neither need nor want the Washington leviathan to focus on their goals and dreams; they are fully capable of doing that for themselves. What they need is private-sector jobs, relief from Washington's intrusive regulation, and for the government to stop squandering hundreds of billions of tax dollars every year. The state of the union would improve substantially if Congress and the executive branch simply stopped conjuring up inventive new ways to waste their money every year."

"If President Obama was genuinely committed to rebuilding trust in Washington, he would have wholeheartedly addressed taxpayers' calls for decreased government spending, budget reform, and increased transparency and accountability," continued Schatz. "For example, he and his top officials have misled the American people on the status of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), encouraged and condoned rampant abuse of power at the Internal Revenue Service, and have refused to disclose costs associated with the burgeoning food stamp program, among other issues. The President seems either unaware or uninterested in how contradictory his statements are; with one hand he claims to want to restore trust in government, yet with the other, he promises to wield the 'pen and the phone' to usurp the people's power and legislate by executive order."

Citizens Against Government Waste is the nation's largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW)
Alexandra Booze, 202-467-5318
or
Leslie K. Paige, 202-467-5300