Gingrich: Romney Has Record Of Big Government, More Bureaucracy, High Taxes And Less Jobs
KUDLOW: But let me come back to this criticism that your plan is actually rather complex because, sir, the Tax Foundation, the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, makes a similar critique. They give your plan a C plus. Huntsman gets the best marks for his modified flat tax. He gets a B plus. Now, Romney gets lower than you. Romney doesn't have a tax plan, he gets a C. But, look, here's the Tax Foundation criticism. You keep a lot of the deductions. You keep the home mortgage interest deduction, you keep the charitable deduction, you keep the earned income tax credit. You keep most of the business tax credits, and you have a $12,000 per person family standard deduction. In other words, you're not really broadening the base. The bottom half of the income scale will still pay virtually no taxes. And the flat tax option you've proposed doesn't kick in for several years. How do you react to those criticisms of your plan?
Rep. GINGRICH: Well, first of all, I'm not in the business of raising taxes. So the fact that you just pointed out--you're right, I'm not going to go out and try to raise taxes on the bottom half of the income ladder. What I'm want to try to do is create enough jobs that the bottom half of the income ladder rises in income and as they rise in income, they'll pay more taxes. I'm very committed to having people have an opportunity to climb the ladder of success once again. If you go back and look at the Reagan years, as you'll remember because you lived through them, the fact is that the bottom part of American life was dramatically better off at the end of the Reagan years. If you look at the impact of our welfare reform when I was speaker, two out of three people went to work or went to school. We had the lowest rate of child poverty in American history by the end of that period because their parents were learning how to work and learning how to create a job. My goal is to have everybody at work, and that's the best thing you can do, I think, is to have everybody have a paycheck rather than a food stamp. And that, in my mind, will then move them into paying taxes as they rise in income.
KUDLOW: Do you think Mitt Romney is a supply sider? Mitt has not put out a tax reform plan. His guy last night said they won't have a tax reform plan until after the election, which they presume they will win. Do you think Governor Romney is a supply sider?
Rep. GINGRICH: Well, in Massachusetts, he raised taxes on business. He called them fees, rather than taxes. But the businesses had to pay them, and so they were taxes. His track record has been one of bigger government, more bureaucracy, higher taxes and less job creation. So I think he's a very standard establishment moderate who doesn't want to break out of the intellectual barriers of the left in Washington and be bold about really creating jobs.
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