Piyush "Bobby" Jindal (born June 10, 1971) is an American politician who was the 55th Governor of Louisiana between 2008 and 2016, and previously served as a U.S. Congressman and as the vice chairman of the Republican Governors Association. In 1996, Jindal was appointed secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals and in 1999, at age 28, he was appointed as the youngest president in the history of the University of Louisiana System. In 2001, President George W. Bush appointed Jindal as principal adviser to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. He first ran for governor of Louisiana in 2003, but lost in the run-off election to Democratic candidate, Kathleen Blanco.

On February 24, 2009, Jindal delivered the official Republican response to President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress. Jindal called the president's economic stimulus plan "irresponsible" and argued against government intervention. He used Hurricane Katrina to warn against government solutions to the economic crisis. "Today in Washington, some are promising that government will rescue us from the economic storms raging all around us," Jindal said. "Those of us who lived through Hurricane Katrina, we have our doubts." He praised the late sheriff Harry Lee for standing up to the government during Katrina. The speech met with biting reviews from some members of both the Democratic and the Republican parties. Referring to Jindal as "devoid of substantive ideas for governing the country", political commentator Rachel Maddow summarized Jindal's Katrina remark as follows: "[Jindal states that] since government failed during Hurricane Katrina, we should understand, not that government should not be allowed to fail again, but that government...never works. That government can't work, and therefore we should stop seeking a functioning government." David Johnson, a Republican political strategist criticized Jindal's mention of Hurricane Katrina, stating "The one thing Republicans want to forget is Katrina." While Jindal's speech was poorly received by several Democratic and Republican critics, others argued that the speech should be judged on substance rather than delivery style.  Jindal's story of meeting Lee in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was questioned following the speech, as Jindal was not in New Orleans at the time.  On February 27, 2009, a spokesman for Jindal clarified the timing of the meeting, stating that the story took place days after the storm. The opportunity to give the response to President Obama's speech was compared by some commentators to winning "second prize in a beauty contest", a reference to the board game Monopoly.

Was the address extremely critical?
Jindal called the president's economic stimulus plan "irresponsible" and argued against government intervention.