Daily Santorum: Math Class
For the past few weeks Rick Santorum has been hyping the release of his economic plan, which he released Tuesday and meets the Herman Cain legislative requirement, as it comes in at a very readable two pages. Santorum did a factory tour in Burlington, Iowa -- Des Moines Register coverage here -- to release the plan, which is a combination of tax cuts, rollback of regulations and passing a Balanced Budget Amendment.
President Santorum would cut the corporate tax rate in half (it tops out at 35 percent now, among the highest in the industrialized world, though there are sizeable loopholes that allow many corporations to pay much less) and would reduce taxes to zero for any manufacturer. He would keep current rates for capital gains, eliminate the estate tax and allow multinational corporations to repatriate offshore investment at a rate of 5 percent (similar to a House Republican proposal).
He proposes to "immediately repeal the regulatory alphabet soup" of President Obama, and offers examples of reforming the patent office -- he says the pending bill in Congress is just a start -- and he takes a shot at the common GOP punching bag of the National Labor Relations Board, saying he would make sure it stays "within its framework." Also he said the Food and Drug Administration approval process should be streamlined and he would repeal the Wall Street reform bill and the Sarbanes-Oxley law that requires more disclosure from publicly traded corporations (and Santorum voted for originally).
Santorum wants to drill for oil pretty much everywhere we can, from the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to the Gulf of Mexico to the Outer Continental Shelf, and he's against the FRAC Act to allow the EPA to regulate natural gas drilling. He also wants a Balanced Budget Amendment that would cap spending and revenue at 18 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, similar to Senate Republicans' plan.
The document doesn't tackle the big spending problems now facing Congress from entitlements, the military and domestic programs. In the past he's endorsed Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to eventually turn Medicare into a private personal account, though he's said that should be done sooner, and when he was in the Senate he backed converting Social Security into private accounts.
The plan is certainly not as far to the right as Tim Pawlenty's, which cut taxes much more drastically and also was an actual budget document that forecasted extremely optimistic 5 percent GDP growth in perpituity. Santorum doesn't present a full budget, just the basic priorities he thinks would improve the economy without a whole lot of math to back them up.
And in a combative appearance on CNN's American Morning, Santorum showed that his math skills could use some work. Santorum and host Ali Velshi sparred over the stimulus package:
SANTORUM: They claimed in December that by the end of last year, that they created 280 million jobs, and now saying they created only 240 million jobs. Look. You are talking about huge increase in spending.
VELSHI: Senator, I ask you to restate that. I've never heard that in my life. Tell me again what you just said.
SANTORUM: If you look at the report that came out on Friday, the president's own economic advisers said that the jobs stimulus package actually created fewer jobs over the period of time since the -- since the stimulus package went in place than it did when they reported in December. Other words there is 30 million less jobs.
The report Santorum referred to stated that the stimulus helped the economy create between 2.4 million and 3.6 million jobs, relative to what would have happened without it. Velshi tries to challenge him that the report doesn't actually mean a loss of 30 million jobs (a misstatement from his original faulty math of 40 million), while missing the point that 240 million jobs is 90 million more than the entire U.S. labor force.
The Schedule: Santorum's Iowa tour continues with a jobs forum in Cedar Rapids, a plant tour in Dubuque, and a job summit followed by a house party in Cedar Falls.