The "American dream" is becoming more difficult to realize because President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats are "crushing our nation" with an under-performing economy that is failing to create the opportunities working-class Americans need, North Carolina senate candidate Thom Tillis said in Saturday's GOP address.
Tillis, who is speaker of the House in the North Carolina state assembly, is campaigning against incumbent Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan in one of the nation's most closely watched races for one of the seats Republicans need to take to regain control of the Senate.
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In his speech, Tillis points out that he was brought up in a working class family with five siblings and parents who often had to work two jobs to make ends meet, while moving from state to state.
"When times got really tough, we lived in a trailer park and my parents took extra jobs in order to save enough money to buy us clothes for school," said Tillis, pointing out that his parents instilled a work ethic in him.
He also could not afford college when he graduated, so he worked and attended school at night.
He said over the years, he worked his way up to become a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers and an executive at IBM, but he didn't get his college degree until he was 36 years old, and considers himself fortunate to have his shot at the American dream.
But now, that dream is becoming harder to achieve, as "we have an administration that has lost sight over what makes our country the most exceptional on this planet."
Further, Washington does not play by the same rules that American families do and live within its means, said Tillis.
"Washington has punted on making the tough decisions, spending our nation to the brink and adding $7 trillion to our national debt," said Tillis. Meanwhile, people are losing jobs and "Washington is using our hard-earned dollars to bail out big Wall Street banks and billion-dollar corporations."
And as Americans struggle to afford healthcare, Obama and Democrats "rammed through Obamacare," causing people to lose their insurance and made premiums skyrocket.
"And the only dream realized in Obamacare was a nightmare of broken promises that we could keep our doctor and our health insurance if we wanted to," said Tillis.
In addition, Obama is leading world affairs from behind, weakening America. Iran is closer to developing nuclear weapons, Russia is infringing on Ukraine and Israel is being attacked by terrorists, Tillis said.
Meanwhile, Obama "still doesn’t have a strategy to destroy the terrorist group known as the Islamic State."
But November's election can change the lack of leadership if a new Senate majority is elected, Tillis said.
Republicans in control of the Senate would rebuild the workforce, get the debt crisis under control and repeal and replace Obamacare, said Tillis.
"Most importantly, we have an opportunity to spark economic growth and create millions of jobs and higher wages for middle-class families by overhauling our broken tax code and cutting burdensome government red tape for our small businesses on Main Street," Tillis said.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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