New Democrat Coalition Chair Ron Kind’s Statement on President Obama’s 2016 State of the Union
Washington, DC – Today, President Obama delivered his final state of the union address as President of the United States. New Democrat Coalition Chair Ron Kind released the following statement:
“As tonight’s speech made clear, we need to build on the bipartisan successes of 2015 and focus on priorities that will allow us to build consensus and make 2016 even more productive. In the past year, we acted on long-dormant agenda items that many had long condemned as impossible to solve – to name just a few, we enacted a trade promotion bill, passed a bipartisan bill to revamp our education system, authorized long term-infrastructure spending, passed a cyber security bill, and completed a deal to keep the government open, provide sequester relief, and increase certainty for our economy. In early fall of last year, the New Dems outlined seven bipartisan priorities for House action – it was encouraging that we completed six of the seven by the year’s end.
“Our American Prosperity Agenda, which we released last year, highlights three priorities – growing the economy in every town and city, giving everyone a shot at the American Dream, and making government work better for the middle class. Importantly, our agenda contains a number of policy items that both Democrats and Republicans can agree on. We saw many of these ideas in tonight’s speech. In the year ahead we will have plenty of critical items that Congress can act on with a little bit of bipartisanship and good-faith negotiating. In 2016, we look forward to working with President Obama, Speaker Ryan, and our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to advance policies that work for everyday Americans.”
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