It’s only been 100 days. But after 100 days of open borders, runaway spending, plans for higher taxes, a bigger welfare state, more government, defunding the police, abandoning the right to life, canceling our most cherished liberties, I’ve had enough.
The time has come for Americans devoted to faith and family and freedom and limited government to stand up and unite behind a positive agenda and win back America.
In 48 months, the Trump-Pence administration achieved the lowest unemployment, the highest household incomes, the most energy production, the most pro-American trade deals, the most secure border and the strongest military in the history of our country. In our first three years, we revived our economy, created seven million good paying jobs by cutting taxes, rolling back regulations at a record pace. Becoming a net exporter of energy for the first time in 70 years. We held China accountable for years of trade abuses, and we brought jobs back to the USA.
We also stood up for our values. We appointed almost 300 conservatives to our federal courts at every level, including Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney-Barrett.
From Day One we defended religious liberty, we ended the assault on the Little Sisters of the Poor and every single day, and our administration stood without apology for the sanctity of human life.
It was perhaps my highest honor when as the president of the Senate, I was able to cast the tie-breaking vote to defund Planned Parenthood in states across America.
But how times have changed. In just 100 days, the Biden-Harris administration has launched an avalanche of liberal policies that threaten to derail all the progress that we made for a safer, more prosperous, more secure America. As Americans heard in the joint session address, President Biden has launched an explosion of runaway spending to the tune of $6 trillion and counting.
And after our administration worked in a bipartisan way with Congress on every single COVID bill, the Biden administration passed their COVID bill on a partisan basis and actually used COVID relief to fund a massive expansion of the welfare state. They propose trillions of dollars in expanding the federal role of government in every area of our life, literally from cradle to grave and they’re using an infrastructure bill to advance a radical climate change agenda.
And just as our economy is getting back on its feet across America, they plan to pay for all of it by cutting planned increases in military spending and passing the largest tax increase in 50 years. But it doesn’t stop there. After inheriting the most secure border in American history, the Biden administration ended construction of the wall and canceled policies that had reduced illegal immigration at our border by 90% and they’ve unleashed the worst border crisis in our history.
They’ve capitulated to international bureaucrats, rejoining the Paris Climate Accord and planning to rejoin the Iran Nuclear Deal. They formed a commission to pack the Supreme Court, supporting gun control they’ve joined the woke chorus accusing law enforcement agencies across America of systemic racism. You know, I don’t think I can say it better than Sen. Tim Scott when he said, “Brave police officers and Black neighborhoods are not adversaries, we are family.” And let me join Tim Scott in saying, from my heart, traveling this nation coast to coast as your vice president, America is not a racist country.
Democrats have been so busy advancing their liberal agenda that sometimes I feel like the left hand doesn’t know what the far left hand is doing because on top of everything else in the last 100 days, there’s been a wholehearted embrace of the radical left’s all-encompassing rapidly escalating war on American traditional values. They abolished the 1776 Commission, they authorized teaching critical race theory in federal agencies and public schools and they restored Title 10 funding to Planned Parenthood of America.
Even AOC said the Biden administration, “Exceeded progressive’s expectations.”
Had enough? I have.
I mean, in 2020, the American people did not vote for that agenda. They did not vote for the agenda of the radical left. And the time has come for freedom-loving Americans to stand up to the far-left agenda of the Biden-Harris administration and say, “Enough is enough!”
It’s time to unite behind a positive agenda built on our highest ideals and win back America. And we have the winning agenda, I have no doubt about it. Built on American values and on our confidence in the American people.
The First Amendment, freedom of speech, freedom of religion. The Second Amendment, right to keep and bear arms. The Tenth Amendment, limited government and letting states lead on the issues most important to our families. And it’s been our movement, in the spirit of the Tenth Amendment that has led the fight to give parents the right to choose where their children go to school, public, private, parochial, or home school.
And it’s our movement that recognizes that election integrity is a national imperative, and election integrity and reform belongs at the state level.
Elections are a state responsibility. Founders of our Constitution crafted it that way. We need to reject any Democratic attempts to nationalize our elections, as you heard President Biden speak about last night. We need to defend state-based reforms, support voter ID, and work every day to restore the confidence of every American in every vote.
And with our agenda and our movement, we will always stand by the men and women who serve on the thin blue line of law enforcement.
We’ll give them resources for training, and we’ll also always defend the right of Americans to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.
We’ll defend religious liberty and the sanctity of life. And it will be our movement that’s the vanguard of the freedom of expression. A movement that cherishes our heritage, our history, and our steady march toward a more perfect union. We will stand with the right of every American of every faith to live, to work, to speak, and to worship according to the dictates of their conscience.
We will reject critical race theory in our schools, in our public universities, and we will cancel cancel culture wherever it arises.
That’s an agenda that’ll win. That’s an agenda that’ll win back America. And it’s a positive agenda in these divided times that each and every one of us needs to take to our neighbors and friends.
Former Vice President Mike Pence is chairman of Advancing American Freedom, a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at The Heritage Foundation and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Scholar at Young America’s Foundation. This op-ed is adapted from a speech he gave at the Palmetto Family Council on April 29. Watch the speech:
