Sen. Mike Lee Invokes the Boston Tea Party in Push for Balanced Budget Amendment During FreePAC Speech

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) took the stage at FreePAC on Thursday night to tout his ongoing push for a balanced budget amendment. He opened the speech by expressing his excitement over addressing the conservative audience.

"There's no place I'd rather be on earth than right here, right now with you," he proclaimed.

Rather than immediately launching into his appeal for balanced federal budgets each year, Lee began by critiquing President Barack Obama. In particular, he claimed that the president is ignoring the nation's most pressing issues.

"He puts words that don't make sense to a catchy tune and then he expects us not to think about it," he said, continuing sarcastically, "Because a $16 trillion debt isn't that bad if you don't think about it."

The American people, he claimed, aren't buying into the distraction. To connect the dots, Lee brought the audience back to 1773, when the Boston Tea Party unfolded. He recapped the reasoning behind the protesters' actions at the time.

"In so doing, they signaled to their national government that they were thinking about [the issues of the day]," Lee proclaimed. "They protested against a kind of government they didn't want.

"Had it stopped -- what happened in Dec of 1773 would have just been a small footnote in history," he continued, referring to their ongoing push for freedom.

Lee challenged the audience to ask, "What's the proper role of the federal government?," and claimed that this is something that Congress and other federal officials have failed to ask. His balanced budget amendment, he claimed, is an answer that will hold government accountable.

"We as American citizens were born to be free...blessed by almighty God," he later said, inevitably telling the crowd to "strive for liberty."