Politico - Rick Santorum Talks Entitlements, Taxes in New Hampshire

News Article

By Melanie Plenda

A day after announcing he was setting up his presidential "testing the waters" effort, Rick Santorum was here Thursday putting forth his vision for the country.

The former Pennsylvania senator spoke at an "ECON-101" town hall-style event sponsored by the Center for Civic Engagement at New England College. The event is part of a series at the college that brings political candidates to the school to discuss America's economic future.

Santorum said funding for entitlement programs must be addressed. Using Medicare as an example, he said nobody knows how much money the government will spend next year on Medicare, and that is the problem.

"The way they structure these entitlements is that they are open-ended," he said. "We basically say to seniors: 'here are all the benefits that are covered... and we'll pay whatever you spend.' Who in their right mind would make [such] a promise to any group? What parent would say to people they love as much as their children, 'here's what we'll pay for, spend as much as you want.' It does not lead to responsible spending or good utilization of benefits."

He also took on President Barack Obama's call Wednesday to let Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy expire. He attacked that plan, arguing that taxing upper-income earners will not fix the spending problem in Washington. Santorum said that if the government "confiscated" every dollar a person making over $100,000 earned, it still wouldn't make a dent in the deficit. Plus he said, "why punish the most productive people? The people who have resources create jobs, not poor people."

He said he wants a simplified tax code. Santorum attributed the complex tax code to lobbying from interest groups. Tax loopholes, he said, are really just "members of Congress picking winners and losers."

As for energy, he said he favors increased drilling for oil in the U.S., including in Alaska. Santorum said that's one of the only ways to ensure an affordable supply of gas and oil.

On abortion, he said it may not be the lead issue in his campaign, though he's questioned on the matter often.

"You want to meet people where they are," he said. "If the voter is concerned about the economy, you better be up there talking about the economy."

If elected, though, he said he likely would tackle the legality of abortion among the many cultural and moral issues he would have to deal with as president. With abortion, he said the most profound way to affect the issue is through nominations to the Supreme Court.

Santorum by and large stayed on message but was tripped up a bit when a student asked him if he knew that the choice of his slogan, "Fighting to make America America again," was borrowed from the "pro-union poem by the gay poet Langston Hughes."

"No I had nothing to do with that," Santorum said. "I didn't know that. And the folks who worked on that slogan for me didn't inform me that it came from that, if it in fact came from that."

The student, whose name was not immediately available, was referring to the poem "Let America Be America Again." When asked a short time later what the campaign slogan meant to him, Santorum said, "well, I'm not too sure that's my campaign slogan, I think it's on a web site."

It was also printed on the campaign literature handed out before the speech.

He went on to say that what he really wants to convey is his feeling about the nation, the wherewithal of its people and the current leadership.

"I better sum it up with a comment I made last night and I made here again today," he said. "In 2008, Americans were looking for someone they could believe in. And I think after two years of seeing what that brought them, they are looking for someone who believes in them."

Source