Speech at 2011 CPAC conference: on Tax Reform

Herman Cain: Attack of the "ations": regulation; legislation, taxation

• Too much regulation: The cost of regulatory compliance on a small business is $10,000 per employee. Imagine the number of small businesspeople who are reluctant to expand their businesses because of the uncertainty hanging over this economy. Imagine what would happen if we are able to unleash the full economic potential of this country.
• Too much legislation: I didn't have to mention cap-and-trade-and-tax-and-kill. I didn't have to mention the Unfairness Doctrine. I didn't have to mention any of the others they're trying to put in through the back door.
• Too much taxation: The only way to fix our messed up tax code is to throw it out and put in a whole new system called the FairTax. Throw it out and start over.

Rick Perry: Taxation is not the solution; live within our means instead

Do you agree with them that the only solution to our challenges is more taxation? More borrowing? More spending? More central control? Me neither.

Over time, Washington has extended so-called "lifelines" to potential voting blocs lines that now bind the hands of state leaders and choke off individual liberties at every turn. As people of conscience, our challenge is to untie those knots that restrain us and return to the vision of the founders.

Americans want government that is leaner, more efficient, and less intrusive into their personal lives. They want government that will live within its means. Americans are obviously fed up with the so-called "progressive" movement that, long ago, set aside the people's interests in favor of expanding government and raising taxes while doing the bidding of labor unions and activist judges.

Mitch Daniels: Wrong ever to take an unnecessary dollar from a free citizen

We believe it wrong ever to take a dollar from a free citizen without a very necessary public purpose, because each such taking diminishes the freedom to spend that dollar as its owner would prefer. When we do find it necessary, we feel a profound duty to use that dollar as carefully and effectively as possible, else we should never have taken it at all.

We say that anytime budgets are balanced and an ample savings account has been set aside, government should just stop collecting taxes. Better to leave that money in the pockets of those who earned it, than to let it burn a hole, as it always does, in the pockets of government.