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Jon Huntsman on Budget & EconomyRepublican UT Governor |
ROMNEY: We do not need to bail out banks in Europe.
PAUL: You have to let it liquidate.
HUNTSMAN: Italy's too big to fail. It would be terrific to say, "It's your problem." But if this goes, the world banking syste could shut down. Doesn't that involve our banks, too? You are seeing the metastasis of the banking sector. I'm concerned that it impacts us in way that moves into our banking sector where we have got a huge problem called "too big to fail" in this country. We have six banks in this country that combined have assets worth 66% of our nation's GDP, $9.4 trillion. These institutions get hit. They have an implied bailout by the taxpayers in this country, and that means that we are setting ourselves up for disaster again. As long as we have banks that are "too big to fail" in this country, we are going to catch the contagion and it's going to hurt us. We have got to get back to a day and age where we have properly sized banks and financial institutions
HUNTSMAN: I've come out with a tax program that basically simplifies, lowers, flattens the rate. Why? Because I did it as governor in the state of Utah; I believe that that experience means something. And I look at people who are earning, you in the workplace, trying to make ends meet. You ought to be given a competitive tax code. We need to clear out the cobwebs. We need to clear out the deductions, the loopholes, the corporate welfare, and all the subsidies. But the thing that you all need to be worried about is the debt that is coming your way, because we have a cancer that is eating away at the core of this country called debt. And it's going to eat alive this country until your generation gets active in the 2012 election cycle and finds a leader who can address debt and growth.
Last week, I detailed specific and comprehensive solutions to create jobs and revive our flailing economy--a plan immediately endorsed by the Wall Street Journal and described as "the most pro-growth proposal ever offered by a US presidential candidate."
A: The plan you will find on our Web site; it is coming. We have been in the race only for a month and a half. But here's what I intend to do: I intend to do exactly what I did as governor of the state of Utah. We took a good state and we made it #1 in terms of job creation. If you want to know what I'm going to do, I'm going to do exactly what I did as governor. It's called leadership. It's called looking at how the free market system works. It's creating a competitive environment. We cut taxes historically. We didn't just cut them, we cut them historically. And we maintained our AAA bond rating. When you look at me and ask, what is that guy going to do? Look at what I did as governor. That is exactly what I'm going to do, and it's exactly what this country needs right now
BACHMANN: That we have to raise the debt ceiling and spend money that we don't have is the wrong premise. [We should] have our balanced budgets and also have our spending priorities in order.
HUNTSMAN: I'm the only one on this stage who stood up for a deal, for the Boehner deal, against this nation defaulting. I know I'm a little different than everybody else in that regard. We are 25% 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, gets us toward a balanced budget amendment. I thought Rep. Boehner should be complimented for what he did. This nation should never default