In his State of the Union address this week, President Obama showed up late to the game of ideas. While he offered up a few good notions, they mimicked what Republicans have been championing for two years now. In just three weeks, the new House Republican Majority has taken pro-active steps to refocus our economy in a real way.

As part of that new Congress, I’ve already voted to cut Congressional budgets by 5%, repeal the $2.6 trillion ObamaCare law and cut $100 billion over the next year by reverting back to 2008 spending levels.

President Obama referenced several options for economic prosperity in his address Tuesday night. But if a spending freeze, earmark elimination and investment in transportation and infrastructure sound familiar, it’s because Republicans have proposed implementing such legislation to save money and create jobs for two years.

Yesterday, the citizen-empowering YouCut program came to life as we voted on a citizen idea to terminate taxpayer financing of presidential election campaigns and Party conventions.

Now that we’ve gained the Majority, Republicans are committed to cut spending and grow the economy in drastic ways. This YouCut vote will put $617 million back in the pockets on of American taxpayers in the next 10 years. It empowers the people and enables our government to do more with less during a scary national debt crisis.

In the last decade, we’ve seen nothing but spending sprees, borrowing and bailouts from President Obama and politicians from both parties. And for the past two years President Obama has promised that higher taxes and more spending would create jobs and grow our economy, while Americans have watched the economy grind to a halt.

In the vast well of government waste, the spending cuts now passed by the House are only a few drops. But they are a beginning — and they represent the first steps I, along with 86 other new GOP Freshman, have taken in less than a month. Americans – and Hoosiers specifically — can have confidence in the new Republican majority to eliminate unnecessary and excessive funding for outdated programs that don’t work.

We are running out of time to address America’s debt crisis and we must make bold moves to redirect America’s economic future. President Obama’s double-sided empty rhetoric cannot allow us to confuse the matter and take our focus away from the meaningful spending cuts that are needed to the job done.