PRESS
RELEASE
from
Jon
Huntsman for President
HUDSON, NH – Jon Huntsman
today unveiled his jobs plan,"Time to Compete" aimed at ending the
Obama Administration’s neglect and putting Americans back to work. The
multi-pronged plan focuses on tax reform, regulatory reform, energy
independence and trade. It draws heavily from Gov. Huntsman's record in
Utah where he cut taxes historically, reduced regulations, and created
an economic environment that made Utah first in the nation in job
growth.
At Gilchrist Metal Fabricating in Hudson, New Hampshire, Governor
Huntsman made it clear to those in attendance and to those around the
country – it’s time for America to compete again.
“The President believes that we can tax and spend and regulate our way
to prosperity. We cannot,” said Jon Huntsman. “We must compete our way
to prosperity. It’s time for America to start working again. It's time
for America to start making things again.”
“It's time for America to stand up and start competing again,” Huntsman
added. “Meeting our challenges will require serious solutions, but
above all, it will require serious leadership – a quality in high
demand in our nation’s capital, and among my opponents on the campaign
trail.”
The Huntsman plan is anchored by a bold tax reform package that
eliminates all tax expenditures and will jumpstart America’s once
mighty engines of industry, provide certainty for American
job-creators, and provide the groundwork for a new industrial
revolution.
Click here to view the full plan.
Today I’d like to outline my plan to put
America back to work, and
rebuild her economic engine – stronger and more powerful than ever
before.
We have an economic crisis in this country. The marketplace is
crying
out for predictability, competitiveness and signs of confidence. Above
all, people need jobs. As we gather this afternoon, 14 million of
our
fellow Americans are unemployed. Millions more are so dispirited
they’ve given up looking.
Our economy is often framed through such numbers. Yet behind the
numbers are human tragedies: families torn apart, relationships pushed
to the brink, men and women struggling to maintain self-esteem and the
pride that comes with self-sufficiency.
There is no more urgent priority at this point in our nation’s history
than creating jobs and strengthening our economic core; everything else
revolves around it.
Meeting our challenges will require
serious solutions, but above
all, it will require serious leadership – a quality in high demand in
our nation’s capital, and among my opponents on the campaign trail.
It was just four weeks ago that I was the only candidate to standup and
support a compromise to save our nation from default – which would have
triggered calamitous consequences for our economy.
President Obama never even offered a plan of his own, and all of my
opponents supported default, even as far as attempting to undermine the
deal at the 11th hour. That simply doesn’t cut it – especially in these
trying times.
The ideas I will discuss today are not radical or revolutionary. They
are straightforward and commonsense.
Many of you have heard them talked about before for years. But therein
lies the problem. Washington has never suffered from a vacuum of ideas;
it suffers from a vacuum of leadership.
I’m not running for president to promise solutions. I’m running to
deliver solutions.
Some of my entitlement reforms come directly from the Paul Ryan Plan.
Other solutions come from the Simpson-Bowles Commission – a bipartisan
group that last year put forth some very sensible tax reforms.
My plan may be challenged by the special interests, on the left and the
right. But it represents a serious path forward – toward fiscal
discipline and economic growth.
It also represents a very different vision for our country than the
current occupier of the White House.
The President believes that we can tax and spend and regulate our way
to prosperity.
We cannot. We must compete our way to prosperity.
When I was born, manufacturing comprised 25 percent of our GDP. Today,
it’s down to around 10 percent. This does not reflect a decline in
American ingenuity or work ethic; it reflects our government’s failure
to adapt to the realities of the 21st Century economy.
We need American entrepreneurs not only thinking of products like the
IPhone or Segway; we need American workers building those
products.
It’s time for Made in America to mean something again.
Overseas, I’ve heard our adversaries speak of America’s decline as if
it were predetermined — it is not. Some say today’s economy is the “new
normal we must
accept.” I refuse to.
It is Time for America to Compete Again…and here is how we’re going to
do it.
DEBT
* Let me start by saying that debt is a cancer that if left untreated
will destroy our economy from within. I have been an outspoken
supporter of the Ryan Plan, which I believe begins to address the
long-term problems that make our current course of spending
unsustainable. I also support a balanced budget amendment. Our
debt is
immoral and it should be unconstitutional as well.
But we cannot restore our nation’s economic strength by cuts
alone. We must compete.
TAX REFORM
* Over the last few decades, our tax code has devolved into a maze of
special interest carve-outs, loopholes and temporary provisions that
cost taxpayers more than $400 billion a year to comply with.
* Rather than tinker around the edges of a broken system, I’m going to
drop a plan on the front steps of the Capitol that says, “We need to
clean house.” Get rid of all tax expenditures, all loopholes, all
deductions, all subsidies. Use that to lower rates across the board.
And do it on a revenue-neutral basis.
Individual Rates
* For individual taxpayers, I propose a version of the plan crafted by
the Simpson-Bowles Commission, known as the “zero” plan. We will
eliminate all deductions and credits, in favor of three drastically
lower rates: 8, 14 and 23 percent.
* We will eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is unfairly
penalizing a growing number of families and small businesses.
* We will also eliminate taxes on capital gains and dividends, which
will lower the cost of capital and encourage investment in the economy.
Corporate Rates
* The United States cannot compete with the second-highest business tax
rate in the developed world. So I propose lowering it from 35 to 25
percent – 1 point lower than the OECD average.
* A tax holiday for repatriation of corporate profits earned overseas
should also be implemented immediately, making between $400 billion and
$600 billion available to companies to make capital investments.
REGULATORY REFORM
* Our creative and entrepreneurial class is being strangled by a
complex and convoluted web of misguided and overreaching regulations.
* One of the most indefensible examples is the National Labor Relations
Board’s ongoing effort to prevent America’s largest exporter, Boeing,
from building a new plant in South Carolina in an effort to block
investment in right-to-work states. If elected, I will immediately
instruct the NLRB to stop pursuing this politically motivated attack on
free enterprise, and if they fail to do so I will replace
them.
* An equally chilling regulation we must repeal is Dodd-Frank.
Rather
than true financial reform, the American people were handed a 1600 page
monstrosity that gives unelected bureaucrats unprecedented and
unreviewable power over our financial system.
* Another fundamental problem with Dodd-Frank is it perpetuates “too
big to fail.” Taxpayers must be protected from more bailouts. Yet we
must reconsider whether increased competition between smaller entities
is more efficient than a vast new regulatory apparatus that will almost
certainly produce more bailouts.
* We also must repeal Obamacare, a $1 trillion bomb dropped on the
taxpayers that only hampers businesses and job creation.
*We must end the EPA’s serious regulatory overreach, exemplified by its
current effort to pass a new ozone rule, which would effectively halt
new construction. And we must also reform the FDA’s ridiculous approval
process that increases development costs and unnecessarily delays new
products.
ENERGY INDEPENDENCE
* To free ourselves from OPEC’s grasp and create American jobs, we must
end our heroin-like addiction to foreign oil. Every year America sends
more than $300 billion overseas for oil – to unstable and unfriendly
regimes.
* We need to expand and open up new sources of domestic energy, thus
lowering costs to businesses and improving our global competitiveness.
* We must start by expediting the approval process for safe,
environmentally-sound projects – including our oil and gas reserves in
the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska and appropriate Federal lands and
supporting the Keystone Pipeline Project in cooperation with Canada.
* We must eliminate subsidies and regulations that discourage domestic
energy sources and technologies such as natural gas, biofuels and
coal-to-liquids.
* Here is just one example. The U.S. has more natural gas than Saudi
Arabia has oil. Yet the Obama Administration just issued fuel economy
regulations that effectively bar heavy-duty trucks from converting to
natural gas.
* Simply said, we can and must begin producing more energy right here
at home.
FREE TRADE
* As a former diplomat, trade official, governor and business
executive, I’ve witnessed firsthand the tremendous economic
opportunities of free trade.
* 95 percent of the world’s customers live outside our borders, and
with the U.S. party to only 17 of more than 300 trade agreements
worldwide; opening more markets for American businesses should be a
commonsense tool to spark immediate growth.
* For 2.5 years, the President has failed to act on three trade
agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama – I’d make them a top
priority.
* Washington must also immediately start discussions with India to end
in a bilateral free trade agreement strengthening our relationship with
a friend who will prove to be critical to America’s success in the 21st
century.
CLOSING
On each of these points and more outlined in our American Jobs Plan,
President Obama’s economic record has been marked by failure.
As the Obama Administration has dithered, other nations are making the
choices necessary to compete in the 21st Century. I’ve seen that
first
hand.
In Brasilia and Beijing, New Delhi and Seoul, our competitors are
making the hard choices that will help assure their children a better
life. If we fail to do the same, we are robbing our children of
an
inheritance every previous American generation has had.
I’m running for President because I’m prepared to lead the American
people to that better and brighter future.
We are the most optimistic, common-sense problem solvers on
Earth. We
can turn this thing around. I seek your vote to reignite
America's
light.
Ladies and Gentleman:
We have no choice; we must unite and look beyond politics for solutions.
It’s time for America to start building things again.
It’s time for America to start working again.
It’s time for America to compete again.
I believe with a new administration we can do just that.
President Obama won in 2008 on Hope. We’re going to win in 2012 on
Solutions.
Thank you.