AMES, Iowa – On Thursday, the third debate of candidates seeking the Republican nomination for presidential run took place at Iowa St. University. Participating in the debate were candidates Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.
To assist readers in differentiating the positions of the GOP candidates on various issues raised in the debate, this review of the debate will be published in two parts.
This, Part I, covers topics related to the economy. Because the economy is such a pressing issue right now in our country, the moderators chose to spend significantly more time asking questions about it than they did on any other topic. The candidates’ comments and opinions have been broken into three parts: (1) Their individual plan for improving the economy, (2) the subject of raising taxes, and (3) the debt ceiling/downgrade of our credit rating.
Individual Plan for Improving the Economy
All of the candidates were asked different questions that addressed their own plans for improving the economy.
Michelle Bachmann said, “We can start to see recovery within three months … if we put into place what we know to be true. Number one, we should not have increased the debt ceiling …We need to have a president of the United States who stands firm on [his or her] convictions … I have a consistent record of standing on my convictions.”
Herman Cain offered a four-step plan for improving the economy:
1. “We must have a maximum tax rate for corporations and individuals of 25 percent;”
2. “Take the capital gains tax rate to zero;”
3. “Take the tax on repatriated profits to zero;” and
4. “Make them permanent … here’s the big one, make them permanent. Uncertainty is what’s killing this company.”
The one specific thing most important to Cain was, “Make the tax rates permanent.”
Newt Gingrich offered a different approach, “Congress … should repeal the Dodd-Frank bill. They should repeal Sarbanes-Oxley. They should repeal Obamacare. They should institute Lean Six Sigma across the entire federal government.”
He also said, “The Fed should be totally audited, it should be out in public, … we should know who they bailed out and why they bailed them out and who they didn’t bail out. I think it is a scandal that the Federal Reserve is secret and … frankly, their monetary policy since the late 90s has been a major factor in the bubble that has been created and a major factor in the economic pain we’re now going through. … The Fed is the primary villain in failing to have a sound money policy.”
Jon Huntsman expressed that actions speak louder than words, he said, “I intend to do exactly what I did as governor in the state of Utah. We took a good state and made it number one in this country in terms of job creation, … we cut taxes historically, … we created the most business friendly environment in the entire country.”
When he was accused of supporting the stimulus he responded saying, “Let me tell you what I talked about with respect to the stimulus, I talked about the need for more tax cuts in the stimulus. We didn’t have enough of it. … In the state of Utah, we had done historic tax cuts. We created a flat tax … – exactly what needs to happen in this country. … We became the number one job creator in this nation and the best managed state. …I’m running on my record.”
Huntsman took part of his plan from his business experience. He said, “If you want to build a facility in the United States, you can’t – because of the [Environmental Protection Agency’s] regulatory reign of terror. …The percentage of our [gross domestic product] that is from manufacturing is down to 10 or 11 percent. When I was born, it was 25 percent and it used to mean something when you read ‘Made in America.’ We don’t make things anymore in this country.
“We need to start making things in this country and in order to do that we need serious regulatory reform, not just repealing Obamacare, but ending the EPA’s regulatory reign of terror.
“We need to create a more competitive environment that speaks to real tax reform that allows our entrepreneurs and businesses to step up and get it done and expand our economic base and create jobs.”
Ron Paul had a lot of solutions to the problem, and he tried to rattle them all off in his one minute allotted speech window. He said, “What you have to do is restore sound money. You have to understand why you have a business cycle, why you have booms and busts. If you don’t do that, there’s no way you can solve these problems and the boons and busts come from a failed monetary system. The interest rates, that are way lower than they should be, encourage mal-investment and debt. To get out of that, all this other tinkering, you cannot do that unless you liquidate debt. You don’t bail out the people that are bankrupt and dump the debt on the people. That is what’s happened. So, you have to allow liquidation of debt. Eliminate the mal-investment. Then you go back and you can get growth again by having a better tax structure. Lower taxes invite capital back into this country. We need to change the environment for our businesses. We need to lower the regulations and the taxes and have private property rights and contract rights. Under those conditions you can have growth again.”
Paul also responded to what Gingrich said about the Fed, “I’m delighted that mainstream is catching up with this, these days, for auditing the Fed. This is great … the Fed creates the business cycle. If you don’t understand the business cycle, you don’t know why we have recessions. The sooner we learn that, the better.”
Tim Pawlenty didn’t believe he could outline his entire economic recovery plan in the one-minute window allotted to him so he took the opportunity to contrast himself with President Obama.
“I hope people will go to our website and read that whole [economic] plan because it’s the most specific, comprehensive plan of any candidate in this race,” he said. His plan is found here. http://www.timpawlenty.com/articles/a-better-deal-governor-tim-pawlenty-economic-policy-remarks .
“In fact, I’ll offer a prize tonight to anyone … if you can find Barack Obama’s specific plan on any of those items (Social Security reform, Medicare reform, Medicaid reform), I will come to your house and cook you dinner.”
When asked if the 5% growth outlined in his plan is unrealistic he responded, “The United States of America needs a growth target. I don’t want the United States growth target to be anemic or [a] lagger like Barack Obama’s.”
Mitt Romney outlined a seven-point plan:
1. “Make sure corporate tax rates are competitive with other nations.”
2. “Make sure that our regulations and bureaucracy works, not just for the bureaucrats in Washington, but for the businesses that are trying to grow.”
3. “Have trade policies that work for us, not just our opponents.”
4. “Have an energy policy that gets us energy secure.”
5. “Have the rule of law.”
6. “Great institutions that build human capital because capitalism is about people not just capital and physical goods.”
7. “Have a government that doesn’t spend more money than it takes in.”
“And I’ll go do it,” he said. “… Back in the days of John F. Kennedy the federal government took up, along with the state and local governments, 27 percent of the economy. Today government consumes 37 percent of the economy. We’re inches away from no longer having a free economy.”
Layoffs occurred under Romney at Bain Capital; he said, “Of those hundred businesses we invested in, tens of thousands of jobs, net-net, were created. I understand how the economy works. … If people want to send to Washington someone who spent their entire career in government, they can choose a lot of folks. But if they want to choose someone who understands how the private sector works, they’re going to have to choose one of us [pointing to himself and Herman Cain] because we’ve been in it.”
Rick Santorum focused on manufacturing, “If you want to know where the middle of America went, it went to China; it want to Malaysia; it went to Indonesia. … Take the corporate rate and cut it to zero for manufacturers, … our jobs will come back.”
Santorum was later the third candidate to mention the Fed. “We need to audit the Fed,” he said. “I disagree with most of what Ron Paul said. Just because he’s mostly wrong doesn’t mean he’s always wrong.”
Raising Taxes
This was one and probably the only stance that every candidate on the stage took alike. Each made it clear that he or she is completely against a raise in taxes in any way, shape or form. In fact, at one point the candidates were given the scenario of having an offer on the table including both spending cuts and tax hikes, with $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes. Every single candidate raised their hand expressing that they would turn down the deal. Throughout the entire debate there wasn’t a single candidate that showed any interest in or inclination towards raising taxes.
Debt Ceiling and Downgrade of our Credit Rating
There was a lot of talk during the debate about the recent raising of the debt ceiling and the downgrade of the country’s credit rating.
Michelle Bachmann made it clear where she stood. She spelled it out, “People are looking for a champion … when others ran, I fought and I led against increasing the debt ceiling. … From the time I’ve been in congress we’ve gone from $8.67 trillion in debt to now almost double [with] $16.7 [trillion]. … [To] not raise the debt ceiling … [would have been] the right thing to do. The worst thing you can do is [to] continue to borrow money and spend money that we don’t have. …When [Standard and Poor’s] dropped our credit rating, what they said is we don’t have an ability to repay our debt. …I was proved right in my position; … we should have cut government spending, which was not done. And we needed to get our spending priorities in order.”
Herman Cain had a similar message: “I did not agree with raising the debt ceiling,” he said.
“…The way to deal with it is to pay those things that need to be paid and then make the tough choices of cutting the other things – agency by agency, program by program. Based upon performance metrics … the problem still has not been solved and Standard and Poor’s has sent a message.”
Newt Gingrich made sure to point out what he sees as a major flaw in how the debt ceiling was raised.
“I think this super-committee is about as dumb an idea as Washington has come up with in my lifetime,” he said. “…What they ought to do is scrap the committee right now, recognize it’s a dumb idea, go back to regular legislative business, assign every subcommittee the task of finding savings, do it in the open through regular legislative order, and get rid of this secret phony business.”
Jon Huntsman saw this issue in a different light than anyone else.
“On the default,” he said, “…I’m the only one on this stage who stood up for the Boehner deal against this nation defaulting. I know I’m a little different than everybody else in that regard. We are 25 percent of the world’s GDP. We are the largest financial services sector, by far, in this entire world and the thought that people would just let this nation default when we could have a deal that at least gets things going on cuts, raising the ceiling, gets us toward entitlement reform, and gets us toward a balanced budget amendment … I thought Speaker Boehner should be complimented for what he did. This nation should never default.”
“This nation is hurting, it is scared, and it is bankrupt. We have a cancer growing in this country called debt and we must deal realistically with it.”
Ron Paul initially brought up points similar to some of the other candidates.
“[Standard and Poor’s] didn’t downgrade [the US credit rating] mainly because [congress and the president] couldn’t come to a conclusion,” he asserted. “They downgraded it because congress and the president didn’t know what was going on.”
He also said, “The country’s bankrupt and nobody’s willing to admit it … All these proposed cuts weren’t cuts at all.”
Paul then brought out something very different from anything that any other candidates said, “We owe the Fed $1.6 trillion in treasury bills. Where’d they get the money to buy it? They create it out of thin air. So we pay them interest. Now that’s on our books. So we literally, with legislation, could wipe $1.6 trillion off. That’s not a solution to the monetary problem or our spending problems, but it would give you a year to work this out and we wouldn’t have had any of that debate going on. Those were all scare tactics to try to scare people.”
Tim Pawlenty decided to explain what he would do as president by showing what he did as Governor.
“If you go to my record in Minnesota, you’ll see government spending went from historic highs to historic lows … I balanced the budget every time, in Minnesota, that I was governor,” he said. “In fact, my last budget ended June 30th of this year with a surplus.”
Mitt Romney seized the opportunity to play on his gubernatorial record.
“I was fortunate enough to be a governor that got an increase in the credit rating of my state,” he said and contrasted, “…We got a president who got a decrease in the credit rating of our nation.”
Romney then explained what he did as governor, “I came in we had a huge deficit. I went to the legislature and I said I want expanded powers to unilaterally be able to cut spending, not just slow the rate of growth, but to cut spending. And they gave it to me and I did. We cut spending every single year I was governor, we balanced the budget and by the end of my term we had put in place over a $2 billion rainy-day-fund.”
Rick Santorum chimed in with most of the debating candidates’ opinion that “We should have balanced the budget.” But he then took a little bit different course: “To suggest that we never need to raise the debt ceiling, that is again showmanship, not leadership. Of course we have to raise the debt ceiling at some point. We’re borrowing 42 cents out of every dollar … are you going to cut 42 cents of every dollar? Just to remind you, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, defense and interest on the debt is 60 percent. That means cut everything else and something of those.”
Part II Coming Soon
Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2011, all rights reserved.
Why was Rep. Michele Bachmann exempted from being asked questions on illegal immigration? Her stance on this issue is far above the rest who stood behind their dais in Ames, Iowa? Was this leaving Bachman out of this social issue premeditated? Whether this was the case or not, she strands strong as this uncontrolled illegal immigration invader problem has been ignored by administrations for years. Bachmann will not tolerate any form of Amnesty as President. Every Sanctuary City and state that does not comply by cutting of these ordinances will lose federal funding. It’s been said many times before, that American cannot afford to subsidize Mexico, Central America, Europe, Pacific Rim or other nation; its inhabitants impoverished and desperate illegal immigrants anymore? This illogical problem is crippling America’s economy by the massive payouts for families, which have migrated illegally across our sovereign border.
Of course open border disciples, business lobbyist will deny the obvious, that this illegal incursion is drowning us in debt—with no end in sight. (FAIR) American Federation of Immigration Reform that of 2009, reported that overall costs to subsidize the illegal alien household was calculated through, federal, State, County and Municipal sources that it was a $113 Billion dollar problem. Federation for American Immigration Reform issued a report in which they estimate the total annual costs of illegal immigration at the federal, state and local level is estimated to be $113 billion combined. The states are bearing the burden of the costs; while the government share is nearly $29 billion, it escalates to $84.2 billion at the state and local level. The annual outlay that illegal aliens cost U.S. taxpayers is an average amount per native-headed household of $1,117. The state-by-state breakdown begins on page 4 of this report at: http://www.fairus.org/site/DocServer/USCostStudy_2010.pdf?docID=4921
Education for the children of illegal migrants and immigrants constitutes the sole largest outlay to taxpayers, at an annual price tag of nearly $52 billion. Virtually all of those expenses are absorbed by state and local governments. At the federal level, only about one-third of outlays are matched by tax collections from illegal aliens. At the state and local level, an average of less than 5 percent of the public costs is allied with the illegal immigration occupation and recouped through taxes collected from illegal nationals. Nearly all illegal aliens do not pay income taxes; only those who do, much of the revenues collected are refunded to the illegal immigrants when they file tax returns. Many are also claiming tax credits resultant in payments from the U.S. Treasury. Please note this is not a static expenditure, but these dollars amounts are raising all the time.
Ask yourself, why the Grand Canyon State of Arizona had not choice, but to clamp down against the massive dollar amounts spent to appease illegal alien homesteads How can a small South Western state that is mostly desert, afford to pay out $2 Billion dollars annually for foreigners? Then again– how can Leftist legislators in Sacramento, California, justify taking taxpayer’s money and giving it to illegal aliens when these persons truly don’t exist, other than in ICE enforcement records or Homeland Security? HAS ANY READER THOUGHT OF CHECKING THEIR STATES PAYOUT TO FOREIGN NATIONALS? Although they come here through the magnet of jobs, welfare and each year bring their children. The estimates of 300.000 babies enter via a broken, intermittent border fence, that can no-way be fully enforced without the deployment of troops. Instant citizen for babies is above most payments, is an incredulous cost forced on taxpayers by Liberal judges legislating from their gavel.
Because entering America without papers is not a—FELONY—it is essentially a giant hole in the wall, which imports not only millions of illegal aliens, but a massive population of criminals; bringing death, mayhem and ID theft on the unsuspecting citizens and residents. As I said in my commentary yesterday, the only way to sever the incentive of jobs (which I never thought I would admit) is issuing every citizen and legal resident a government ID CARD. This could be used to get employed US workers. (8 million illegal aliens have stolen jobs from mostly low income Americans according to reputable sources.) The same official ID card could be presented for voting; instead of the mess we have now, with convicted felons, deceased and illegal aliens, fraudulently using the election process to alter an elections direction.
You would also use this federal ID CARD to be checked against other data bases, official birth records to see if you have the right to be issued a driver’s license, vehicle insurance, welfare or other Public entitlements. I shouldn’t gloat over the welfare payouts in California, but it is a self inflicted wound caused by the Liberals in the capitol. California, the Godfather of Sanctuary State has a $19 Billion dollar budget gap, with a staggering cost of $21 Billion $ according to the National Conference of State Legislators in 2009. We must wonder how the welfare costs have escalated in two years in the once Golden State?
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Go Ron Paul 2012!!!!
Good Luck in Ames today!!!
I’m backing Ron Paul!! He’s just what America needs!
“Booms and busts”
not
“Boons and busts.”
Come on.
Thank you, David. Fixing it now.
Ron Paul was and is the only sincere candidate. The rest are just Republican Party shills. Ron Paul for US President in 2012.
Ron Paul..We need him, the world needs Him…Common America..make the right choice..
When fascism goes to sleep it looks under the bed for Ron Paul.
He has never taken a government junket.
He does not participate in the lucrative Congressional Pension Program.
He returns a portion of his annual Congressional Office Budget every
year.
He has never voted to raise taxes.
He has never voted for an unbalanced budget.
He voted no to the bankster bailout.
He voted no to raising the debt ceiling and warned us against
the “Super Congress” part of the legislation that resembles both
an “ Enabling Act” and a “Politburo.”
He has never voted to restrict gun ownership.
He has never voted to raise Congressional Pay.
He never voted to increase Executive Branch Power.
He will Reinstate The Constitution and Save The Republic
He will END the unconstitutional FED.
He will phase out the unconstitutional IRS beginning immediately
He will secure the borders
He will limit Big Government in your private affairs
He will stop Illegal immigration and no amnesty
He voted against regulating the Internet
He is the only candidate for President in 2012 who actually served his country.
He was a flight surgeon during Vietnam.
Ron Paul’s popularity is so high among U.S. service members that the Texas
Congressman’s presidential campaign has received more money from U.S.
soldiers than any other candidate in the 2012 presidential race.
http://www.thestatecolumn.com/capito…-the-military/
He voted against the Iraq War and warned us against going forward with
an undeclared war.“Let it not be said that no one cared, that
no one objected once it’s realized that our liberty and wealth are in
Jeopardy” July 10th, 2003
He voted against the un-patriotic so called Patriot Act.
He supports a non-interventionist foreign policy yet a strong military
He will end the inflation tax He is a true Constitutional
Conservative
He would have soundly beat Obama in 2008 because Independents trust him and like him.
We could have had a V8 instead of McCain’t in 08
Ron Paul for President 2012
Because no one else can be trusted to say what he
means and do what he says like Ron Paul does.
Ron Paul is the man of the hour. They used to laugh him for being way ahead
of the others in his thinking and his warnings. Now, they are not
laughing because what he predicted is coming to pass. Now, he is being called
a prophet for having warned us and still calmly suffered through the
barbs. “First they, ignore you, then they fight you, then you
win.” Gandhi
“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no
vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of
justice is no virtue!” Barry Goldwater”
“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more
efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to
promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to
pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs,
but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that
have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an
unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether
legislation is “needed” before I have first determined
whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be
attacked for neglecting my constituents’ “interests,” I
shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty
and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.” Barry
Goldwater
Senator Barry Goldwater’s son, former Congressman Barry
Goldwater Jr. endorses Ron Paul. Ron Paul has been warning us for
so long of the impending economic disaster we are seeing today,
and he has been purposefully working to wake us to realize we
must change our course to save the Republic. I take Ron Paul
very seriously. He may not be the most polished public speaker,
but he speaks the truth with unvarnished power; He needs no
teleprompter to carry on an intelligent discourse for over two
hours to a packed auditorium of twenty and thirty something
voters! He may not be the tallest, or the most strikingly
handsome candidate, he doesn’t have “pretty hair” but people want the Real Deal.
Ron Paul is the real deal.