Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels will deliver the Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address next week [via memeorandum]. Daniels might expand on the points he made during an exclusive interview granted to FreeEnterprise.com. Here's what he said about the inability to solve problems in Washington:

What bothers Daniels most about the current leadership in Washington is that it does not trust Americans to manage their own lives. “The problems I have with those in leadership now and the mentality that they represent is they’re really telling the American people: You can’t cut it. You can’t manage your own life. It’s just too complex, and left to your own devices, way too many people will simply make mistakes,” says Daniels. “So as I say in the book, we really have to decide if we are creatures of dignity or objects of therapy. I argue for policies that would affirm and restore the average citizen’s autonomy.”

Daniels points to the state health care reform he put in place in 2006. The Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP) is a health savings account for state employees and the uninsured. It’s paid for by a new cigarette tax and a waiver approved by the federal government that allows the state to reallocate Medicaid dollars toward the plan. “Citizens make their own decisions and manage the money. They are protected in true insurance fashion,” Daniels explains, noting that 99% of Indiana’s state employees have signed up for HIP. “We now have a body of experience that shows just because people have a moderate or low income doesn’t mean they can’t make wise decisions for themselves, and in fact, we have substantially lower health costs—by double digits—than would ordinarily be expected. Why? Because people are acting like real consumers.”

Daniels doesn’t hold back his criticism of the Obama administration, which, he says, is pursuing an agenda in which “jobs and growth always lose—doesn’t matter what the issue is. And an administration that can’t immediately stop piling new regulations, costs, and doubts in front of job creators is not serious about anti-poverty. It’s not serious about bringing down unemployment in this country. There are other things that are more important to it. The administration probably doesn’t see it that way, but based on the facts, there’s no other way to see it.”