In contrast, Santorum seems to be quietly building support among Republicans in states that have yet to vote. His strong performance in recent debates and his status as the only Republican candidate to avoid going negative against his opponents may be what inspires voters to take a closer look at Santorum, but his conservative principles and detailed policy proposals provide a pleasant surprise. His blue collar background and the revelation in one debate that he did his own taxes make Santorum seem sensible and approachable in a way that Romney and Gingrich are not.
In an election that is shaping up as a referendum on Barack Obama’s handling (or mishandling) of the economy, Santorum offers a detailed conservative vision for recovery. On his website, Santorum’s proposal for tax reform is a two-tiered income tax with rates of 10 and 28 percent. He wants to simplify the tax code, but keep or enhance family-friendly deductions and credits. For example, he would triple the personal deduction for each child and eliminate marriage penalties while maintaining the current deductions for charitable giving, home mortgage interest, healthcare, retirement savings, and children.
On the business side, Santorum would cut the U.S. corporate tax rate, the second highest in the world, in half, reducing it from 35 to 17.5 percent. He would reduce the capital gains and dividend taxes to 12 percent. He favors eliminating the alternative minimum (AMT) tax and the death (estate) tax.
To help bring jobs and money back to the U.S., Santorum would like to eliminate the tax on repatriated income that businesses bring into the U.S. to invest in new manufacturing equipment. Other repatriated income would be taxed at a reduced rate of 5.25 percent. He opposes the onerous regulations written by the Obama Administration and promises to repeal Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and all other Obama-era regulations with an economic impact of over $100 million.
Out of control federal spending and a mounting federal debt is also a hot-button issue for 2012. Santorum would commit to $5 trillion in spending cuts over five years and would immediately reduce non-defense discretionary spending to 2008 levels. Defense spending and social programs would be frozen at current levels for five years. He would cut the federal work force by 10 percent and freeze pay for non-defense related employees for four years.
Santorum supports the Paul Ryan plan for saving Medicare and believes that Social Security and other entitlement programs must be reformed and placed on a sustainable path. The number of programs that he would cut is long, but includes energy subsidies, agriculture subsidies, Planned Parenthood, and halving the number of USAID employees and funding for the UN. He would use Senator Tom Coburn’s March 2011 GAO report that found a potential $100 billion in savings from eliminating 34 wasteful and duplicative programs and the Simpson-Bowles debt reduction plan that was commissioned – then ignored – by President Obama.
With gas prices rising and forecast to increase to record levels before the election, energy is likely to become an issue as well. Santorum would remove all subsidies and tax credits for energy companies. He would remove bans on drilling for oil and natural gas in an effort to decrease prices by increasing supply. Santorum would approve the Keystone XL pipeline, recently rejected by President Obama, in order to create jobs and increase the supply of oil. He would also roll back the new EPA carbon rules and other harmful regulations.
With respect to economic policy, Rick Santorum’s platform is similar to those of the other candidates. His foreign policy is close to that of Romney and Gingrich (Ron Paul is the outlier on foreign policy). What makes Rick Santorum unique among the Republican candidates is his realization that America’s economic woes are tied to our national moral and ethical failings. In many circles it is fashionable to call for economic reform, but then proclaim the belief that the government has no business trying to influence anyone’s life choices. The reality is that without responsibility, both to oneself and one’s country, there can be no freedom. As John Adams wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Breakpoint.org quotes Santorum at an Iowa town hall meeting as saying ““Yes, [the election is] about growth and the economy, [but] it’s also about what is at the core of our country . . . faith and family. You can’t have a strong economy, you can’t have limited government if the family is breaking down and we don’t live good, moral, and decent lives.” Politifact backs up Santorum’s point that single-parent families have a much higher poverty rate than two-parent families.
The reason that taxpayers are burdened with increasingly large amounts of entitlement spending is that society and the government has given people incentives to make disastrous life choices. After the introduction of the Great Society in the 1960s, the number of children in single-family households increased exponentially due to increases in both divorce and out-of-wedlock births. This means that many of these children grow up in poor households and receive government financial support. Today according to KIDS COUNT, 38 percent of children in Georgia are part of single-parent families.
As children grow up in broken homes, they are at a far greater risk for a multitude of bad things, from being more likely to live in poverty to being more likely to be abused to being more likely to become involved in violent crime, drug abuse, and premarital sex according to the National Fatherhood Initiative. The cycle repeats and deepens as children of broken homes grow up to have their own children and the dependency on government entitlement programs becomes more pronounced. The federal budget grows and the debt gets larger. Solving the debt crisis will ultimately mean breaking the cycle of poverty and government dependency. This will mean giving Americans the tools and knowledge to make better choices… and allowing them to fail when they don’t.
For Republican primary voters dissatisfied with Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum provides solid conservative economic principles and a strong foreign policy with pro-life and pro-family values. The Real Clear Politics index of polls shows Santorum gaining slowly but steadily on Romney and Gingrich. Strong showings in yesterday’s primaries in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado will likely help to revive his campaign. If voters back Rick Santorum on Super Tuesday, when 10 states including Georgia hold primaries, he may be able to supplant Newt Gingrich as Mitt Romney’s chief rival for the nomination.
This article was first published on Examiner.com:
http://www.examiner.com/elections-2012-in-atlanta/rick-santorum-not-just-for-social-conservatives
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