President Obama and Gov. Mitch Daniels seemed to follow similar scripts for what should have been dramatically opposing viewpoints Tuesday night.

Obama advocated tax cuts, regulatory relief and increased energy production in his fourth State of the Union address. So did Daniels, chosen by Republican congressional leaders to give the party’s response to Obama’s speech.

In remarks broadcast from the Indiana War Memorial in downtown Indianapolis, Daniels, who last year considered seeking the Republican nomination for president, rebuked the fiscal policies and deficit spending of Obama’s first three years in the White House.

“A government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class and those who hope to join it,” Daniels said in a speech written before Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress.

He gave credit to Obama “for his aggressive pursuit of the murderers of 9/11 and for bravely backing long-overdue changes in public education” before picking apart the president’s agenda for economic recovery.

“The extremism that stifles the development of homegrown energy, or cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands, or jacks up consumer utility bills for no improvement in either human health or world temperature, is a pro-poverty policy,” said Daniels, who was White House budget director from 2001 to 2003 for President George W. Bush. “It must be replaced by a passionate pro-growth approach that breaks all ties and calls all close ones in favor of private-sector jobs that restore opportunity for all and generate public revenues to pay our bills.

“That means a dramatically simpler tax system of fewer loopholes and lower rates,” he said. “A pause in the mindless piling on of expensive new regulations that devour dollars that otherwise could be used to hire somebody. It means maximizing on the new domestic energy technologies that are the best break our economy has gotten in years.”

Obama pressed for extending the payroll tax cut, curbing tax breaks for millionaires and cutting taxes for U.S. companies that keep jobs in America; opening more than 75 percent of potential offshore oil and gas fields; eliminating tax credits for oil companies while extending them for clean-energy producers; and reducing regulations on construction projects.

Daniels was referring to the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline when talking about “a perfectly safe pipeline.” Citing health, safety and environmental concerns he said have not been resolved, Obama last week denied a permit for construction of the pipeline, which would stretch 1,700 miles from Canada to Port Arthur, Texas.

Daniels also said Tuesday: “No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans while castigating others. As in previous moments of national danger, we Americans are all in the same boat. If we drift, quarreling and paralyzed, over a Niagara of debt, we will all suffer, regardless of income, race, gender or other category.”

He charged that the Obama administration thinks “Americans just can’t cut it anymore.”

“Left to ourselves, we might pick the wrong health insurance, the wrong mortgage, the wrong school for our kids; why, unless they stop us, we might pick the wrong light bulb,” Daniels said, a reference to energy-saving standards for light bulbs.

Republicans in Indiana’s congressional delegation joined in the criticism.

“Tonight, the president failed to offer a serious proposal to avoid a future full of debt and decline,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-3rd, said in a statement.

“The Obama economy has left our country in worse shape than before the president took office,” Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., said in a statement.

Rep. Mike Pence, R-6th, who seeks the Republican nomination to replace Daniels, said in a statement before the speeches: “Tonight, like millions of Americans, I was disappointed to hear more of the same from this president – more borrowing, more spending and more taxes, which stood in stark contrast to the common-sense message of fiscal responsibility and reform from America’s best governor.”

The Indiana Democratic Party issued a list of Daniels’ policies and decisions it deemed a record of “massive deficits, tax hikes, lost jobs and failed privatization schemes.” And a group named A Working Person Like You, reportedly funded by unions, was scheduled to run a TV ad Tuesday night on CNN, MSNBC and Indiana broadcast stations showing a 2006 video of Daniels saying he had no intention of supporting a right-to-work law in Indiana. He has since become a booster of the legislation, which the state Senate passed Monday.

The selection of Daniels to counter Obama prompted media speculation that Republican officials, perhaps unhappy with the current crop of presidential candidates, are hoping Daniels will get into the race. Other observers saw him as a natural pick because he hasn’t endorsed anyone for president.

bfrancisco@jg.net