One of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s strongest advocates on Capitol Hill calls on Congress to aggressively enact the new president’s program in an op-ed published the week before Christmas Eve in several Georgia newspapers.
“This election cycle and its outcome were a loud message to the Washington establishment,” said David A. Perdue (R.-Ga.), who campaigned with both Trump and the new vice-president Michael R. Pence during the 2016 presidential campaign. “In 2017, it’s my resolution to continue working to ensure that message translates into real results. That means keeping our promises and making tough decisions.”
Perdue, who like the president-elect is a businessman and outsider, said President Barack Obama’s policies hurt real people.
“For the last seven years, Georgians and Americans across the country struggled to cope with the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression,” he said. “”It’s time for bold changes that will get our economy growing again, and get Americans working again. The policy prescriptions of the Obama years failed.”
The voters want change and that change needs to start in Trump’s first 100 days, he said.
“We need to put patients in charge of their health care choices with a free-market solution that increases access and lowers the overall spiraling costs of health care, which Obamacare did nothing to address,” the senator said. “We need to undo the regulatory regime and scale back the power of unelected bureaucrats. Let’s start with the EPA’s onerous Waters of the U.S. Act and Clean Power Plan, things we know are crushing farmers, land owners, and small businesses right here in Georgia.”
In order to unleash the economy, Congress must scale back the regulatory burden on business and on energy production, he said. “The lessons of 2016, and the failures of the last seven years, must not be forgotten in 2017.”
Perdue, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also wrote in his op-ed that Obama’s foreign policy has made America weaker and our adversaries stronger.
“In 2017, we have to restore America’s role as a global leader. President Obama’s failed foreign policy created a void of American leadership,” the senator said.
“Largely as a result, the world is more dangerous than it has ever been in my lifetime. We have to develop a real strategy to defeat ISIS and deal with the multitude of threats we face from all corners of the globe,” he said.
The senator’s other priorities include addressing the federal government’s $19 trillion debt, putting conservatives on the Supreme Court, and throughout the federal judiciary, and reforming the federal tax code.
“Come January, an outsider businessman who is listening to the people will be in the White House,” he said.
“Working with President-elect Trump and his capable team, we now have an enormous moment of opportunity to really begin doing so,” he said.
“I’m excited to get to work.”