Herman Cain hosted a luncheon event in Ames, Iowa yesterday. He gave his thoughts on America’s problems and the necessary solutions required to a friendly group of roughly twenty people at the Dublin Bay Restaurant.
He began his remarks with a discussion of the economy, which he flatly declared to be “in crisis” and “unstimulated”. Citing numerous statistics to illustrate his contention, he said we needed “common sense solutions” to the crisis.
He suggested that we needed to lower the corporate tax rate, make the Bush-era tax cuts permanent, and eliminate the capital gains tax. He said our current tax structure was “choking off capital investment” and the non-permanent nature of the tax rates was creating uncertainty in the business community that in turn slowed growth. He said he frequently hears the accusation that lower taxes just are to help the rich. Not so, Cain responds. It’s to “employ the poor”. He wants to move from “entitlement to empowerment”.
Cain said repatriated profit taxes hurt the country, and eliminating them would provide a huge stimulus to the economy that would in reality “cost us nothing”. He also said we should make the payroll tax holiday a full 6.2% for twelve months. Real stimulus would involve “leaving the money in the hands of those who earned it”.
He talked about the current nature of things in the nation’s capitol, observing that “lots of good ideas have died in Washington, D.C.” and compromise among our leaders usually is nothing more than a “half-baked solution”. “I will tell you the truth even if it’s bad”, he said, adding later, “I don’t owe anybody in Washington any favors”.
Speaking of the Obama Administration he said that the majority of the administration had never held a private sector job. In his (Cain’s) administration, someone’s resume would have to illustrate that he had “done somethin’”. He briefly discussed the Health Care law which he asserted was fraught with “phony math”.
He took a number of questions from the group as he nibbled on his lunch, and we learned the following:
- He’s for a gold standard, but not until the national debt is addressed.
- He would, via executive order, reduce the budget of all federal agencies by 10%.
- He’s a fair tax advocate and would eliminate the IRS as we currently know it.
- He’s in favor of “unbundling” the Dept. of Education. He said he was not sure how far that would go.
- He contended that not enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act was a “breach of oath” and called the administration’s position “ridiculous”.
- He said “life begins at conception”, adding that his beliefs “start with the Holy Bible”.
He was clearly at ease talking with the folks around the table, stopping his remarks mid-sentence to ask for prayer once the food was served. Humorous, likeable, and certainly conservative, Cain may well still be a long-shot for the Presidency should he decide to run. But he has a resume filled with goals that he set for himself and achieved ahead of schedule.
What’s one more?