Here it is, with commentary :
DEBT
* Let me start by saying that debt is a cancer that if left untreated will destroy our economy from within. I have been an outspoken supporter of the Ryan Plan, which I believe begins to address the long-term problems that make our current course of spending unsustainable. I also support a balanced budget amendment. Our debt is immoral and it should be unconstitutional as well.
But we cannot restore our nation’s economic strength by cuts alone. We must compete.
Okay, he wants to be different, but starts off with another republican talking point. I agree that we cannot restore our nation’s economic strength by cuts alone – but cuts and more cuts will not make it, we need revenue increases to cover our necessary spending. Huntsman plans to give away even more breaks to the already obscenely wealthy and take it out of our hides.
TAX REFORM
* Over the last few decades, our tax code has devolved into a maze of special interest carve-outs, loopholes and temporary provisions that cost taxpayers more than $400 billion a year to comply with.
* Rather than tinker around the edges of a broken system, I’m going to drop a plan on the front steps of the Capitol that says, “We need to clean house.” Get rid of all tax expenditures, all loopholes, all deductions, all subsidies. Use that to lower rates across the board. And do it on a revenue-neutral basis.
He had me up until “revenue-neutral” – we can not gut our revenue stream and expect to cover our bills.
Individual Rates
* For individual taxpayers, I propose a version of the plan crafted by the Simpson-Bowles Commission, known as the “zero” plan. We will eliminate all deductions and credits, in favor of three drastically lower rates: 8, 14 and 23 percent.
* We will eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is unfairly penalizing a growing number of families and small businesses.
* We will also eliminate taxes on capital gains and dividends, which will lower the cost of capital and encourage investment in the economy.
Corporate Rates
* The United States cannot compete with the second-highest business tax rate in the developed world. So I propose lowering it from 35 to 25 percent – 1 point lower than the OECD average.
* A tax holiday for repatriation of corporate profits earned overseas should also be implemented immediately, making between $400 billion and $600 billion available to companies to make capital investments.
More “Pamper the Rich” CRAP. Now, if we eliminate all loopholes and breaks and subsidies, then perhaps we can afford to lower the rate. In reality, our corporations pay one of the LOWEST Actual tax burdens because of all those loopholes. Now Huntsman wants to give them a tax-free ride on all the money they shipped off in order to evade taxes? They are flush with cash – they are NOT reinvesting in anything! We’ve given them tax breaks, loopholes and all kinds of incentives and the ONLY thing they have done with them is to pay CEOs big bonuses to cut U.S. Jobs.
REGULATORY REFORM
* Our creative and entrepreneurial class is being strangled by a complex and convoluted web of misguided and overreaching regulations.
* One of the most indefensible examples is the National Labor Relations Board’s ongoing effort to prevent America’s largest exporter, Boeing, from building a new plant in South Carolina in an effort to block investment in right-to-work states. If elected, I will immediately instruct the NLRB to stop pursuing this politically motivated attack on free enterprise, and if they fail to do so I will replace them.
Okay, I kind of agree that NLRB shouldn’t be blocking a plant. Its not a “right-to-work” state, its a “right to get fired with no warning and for no reason” state, but semantics aside, we need plants and jobs.
* An equally chilling regulation we must repeal is Dodd-Frank. Rather than true financial reform, the American people were handed a 1600 page monstrosity that gives unelected bureaucrats unprecedented and unreviewable power over our financial system.
* Another fundamental problem with Dodd-Frank is it perpetuates “too big to fail.” Taxpayers must be protected from more bailouts. Yet we must reconsider whether increased competition between smaller entities is more efficient than a vast new regulatory apparatus that will almost certainly produce more bailouts.
* We also must repeal Obamacare, a $1 trillion bomb dropped on the taxpayers that only hampers businesses and job creation.
*We must end the EPA’s serious regulatory overreach, exemplified by its current effort to pass a new ozone rule, which would effectively halt new construction. And we must also reform the FDA’s ridiculous approval process that increases development costs and unnecessarily delays new products.
ENERGY INDEPENDENCE
* To free ourselves from OPEC’s grasp and create American jobs, we must end our heroin-like addiction to foreign oil. Every year America sends more than $300 billion overseas for oil – to unstable and unfriendly regimes.
* We need to expand and open up new sources of domestic energy, thus lowering costs to businesses and improving our global competitiveness.
* We must start by expediting the approval process for safe, environmentally-sound projects – including our oil and gas reserves in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska and appropriate Federal lands and supporting the Keystone Pipeline Project in cooperation with Canada.
* We must eliminate subsidies and regulations that discourage domestic energy sources and technologies such as natural gas, biofuels and coal-to-liquids.
* Here is just one example. The U.S. has more natural gas than Saudi Arabia has oil. Yet the Obama Administration just issued fuel economy regulations that effectively bar heavy-duty trucks from converting to natural gas.
* Simply said, we can and must begin producing more energy right here at home.
FREE TRADE
* As a former diplomat, trade official, governor and business executive, I’ve witnessed firsthand the tremendous economic opportunities of free trade.
* 95 percent of the world’s customers live outside our borders, and with the U.S. party to only 17 of more than 300 trade agreements worldwide; opening more markets for American businesses should be a commonsense tool to spark immediate growth.
* For 2.5 years, the President has failed to act on three trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama – I’d make them a top priority.
* Washington must also immediately start discussions with India to end in a bilateral free trade agreement strengthening our relationship with a friend who will prove to be critical to America’s success in the 21st century.