HANOVER, N.H. — Surging Republican presidential
candidate Herman Cain vigorously defended his 9-9-9 flat tax plan in a
debate Tuesday night, as rivals sought to slow his sudden momentum into
the top tier of contenders for the GOP nomination.
“I
thought it was the price of a pizza when I first heard it,” said former
Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman of the proposal from Cain, a former CEO of the
Godfathers pizza chain. Turn 9-9-9 upside down, added Minnesota Rep.
Michele Bachmann, and “the devil’s in the details.”
Cain,
who’s rocketed into first or second place in several national and
early-state polls, jumped to defend his proposal to replace the federal
income tax with a 9 percent national sales tax, a 9 percent flat
personal income tax and a 9 percent flat corporate income tax.
“9-9-9 is bold, and the American people want a bold solution,” he said.
The
argument over Cain’s tax plan was among the economic issues highlighted
in the debate at Dartmouth College, co-sponsored by The Washington Post
and the Bloomberg business news service.
Former
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the front-runner in recent national
polls, has offered a 160-page plan to revive the economy by keeping tax
rates low, easing regulatory burdens and repealing the 2010 federal
health care law.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who
briefly leaped ahead of Romney last month in some national polls before
sinking after shaky debate performances, said his detailed proposals are
coming soon and will deal with efforts to boost the domestic energy
industry.
But, he said, “I’m not going to lay it all out for you tonight. Mitt’s had six years.”
In
a split-screen view, the candidates offered their economic
prescriptions at the same time the Senate was taking a test vote on
President Barack Obama’s proposed $447 billion plan to boost the economy
with tax cuts and spending on public works projects. The Senate failed
to muster the 60 votes needed to bring the bill to a vote.
Romney
presented himself as a leader who’d break Washington’s gridlock,
looking to consolidate his return to the top of polls on the same day he
rolled out a coveted endorsement from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
“I’d
be prepared to be a leader,” Romney said in the debate, at which he and
seven rivals sat around a table talk-show style. “Three years ago we
selected a person who’d never had any leadership experience, never
worked in the private sector, never had the opportunity to actually
bring people together, and he hasn’t been able to do so.”
Cain presented himself as a fresh alternative who is not bound by government orthodoxy, someone who would do things differently.
“Therein
lies the difference between me, the non-politician, and all of the
politicians. They want to pass what they think they can get passed
rather than what we need, which is a bold solution,” he said.
Romney
continued to hug middle ground as he discussed the 2008 bailout of the
nation’s financial institutions, a step that infuriates many
conservatives.
“The idea of trying to bail out an
institution to protect the shareholders or to protect a certain interest
group, that’s a terrible idea. And that shouldn’t happen,” he said.
“You do want to make sure that we don’t lose the country and we don’t
lose our financial system and we don’t lose American jobs, and that all
the banks don’t go under.”
As a result, Romney
said, careful action is needed “to make sure that you preserve our
currency and preserve our financial system. But bailouts of individual
institutions? No one has interest in that, I don’t think.”
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum objected to the 2008 bailout.
“I
opposed it because it violated the principles of our Constitution, the
spirit of our Constitution, and because the experience I had that if you
open up the door of government involvement in the private sector, some
president will and in fact did drive a truck through it and explode the
size of the federal government and constrict our freedom,” Santorum
said.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wanted to know more about what happened.
“One
of the reasons I’ve said that the Congress should insist that every
decision document from 2008, 2009 and 2010 at the Fed (Federal Reserve)
be released is we are not any better prepared today for a crisis of that
scale because the people who were in that crisis and were wrong are
still in charge,” he said.
Federal Reserve
Chairman Ben Bernanke and the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulatory
overhaul law were frequent targets of criticism from virtually all the
candidates Tuesday night.
Gingrich said the Fed
has secretly spent hundreds of billions of dollars without
accountability. “It is corrupt and it is wrong for one man to have that
kind of secret power,” he said.
Rep. Ron Paul of
Texas, who’s long criticized the Federal Reserve, said he did help
manage a partial audit of the central bank that revealed $5 trillion in
aid going to overseas banks.
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©2011 the McClatchy Washington Bureau
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