When a reporter asked Mitch Daniels, the former Republican governor of Indiana, what the country is doing to inhibit growth at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast held in Washington on Wednesday, he responded, “What are we doing that isn’t?”
The current president of Purdue University called the national debt an “overriding threat,” which he says will weigh more heavily on the poor, middle class, and young people. But in order to face that threat head-on, Daniels said, lawmakers should set aside their differences and focus on finding middle ground to fix the economy.
“I think we should adopt policies specifically in the interests of the yet-to-haves in this country,” said Daniels. “People of very different views ought to come together and say look, we’ve got to call every close one and break every tie in favor of what will allow the private economy to grow faster.”
Daniels statements on behalf of the so-called yet-to-haves, who often include racial minorities, the low-income, the poor, and the elderly, came on the heels of Ohio governor John Kasich’s interview with the New York Times, in which he declared that there is a “war on the poor” in America by his fellow Republicans in Washington.
“You know what?” said Kasich, who worked against the state legislature to expand Medicaid in the state. “The very people who complain ought to ask their grandparents if they worked at the W.P.A.”
