Huntsman Campaign Press Release - Huntsman: America Needs Jobs, Not Bus Tours

Jon Huntsman on Monday blasted President Obama's bus tour as unhelpful political gamesmanship while the nation's economic engine flounders under an oppressive regulatory regime.

Asked by Chicago radio talker Don Wade if he thought the president was planning for job creation while on his reelect tour of several Midwest states, Huntsman, who joked he was as much fan of "good rock band" tours as anyone, said it's time to "face the facts" of the White House's inactivity.

"To have the president or anybody else, when the most important thing they can be doing is standing up and say, 'Okay, the regulations of this country are what are strangling business, that's why capital isn't making its way to the marketplace, that's why people aren't hiring, that's why there's zero confidence in our future, because we're stuck in bureaucratic red tape,'" he said. "Just stand up and say, 'We're gonna repeal Obamacare.'"

Spotlighting the Environmental Protection Agency and financial regulatory reform legislation Dodd-Frank as two culprits chasing capital, Huntsman, who helped steer his family's chemical company, lamented that "businesses can't see around the corner." (At his debate debut last week in Ames, Iowa, Huntsman also spoke of the EPA's "regulatory reign of terror" on would-be American manufacturers.)

"Let's talk about, you know, Dodd-Frank and the fact that the capital ratio requirements for banks are making it impossible to get our life blood to small businesses, which is capital," the Utahn said. "Let's talk about rolling back some EPA and manufacturing regulations and get on with the manufacturing revolution that this country is totally capable of launching."

But Huntsman grew most animated when asked about the news that Obama is no longer briefed daily on the economy.

It is "unbelievable" that our president does not "read the daily economic reports and respond to them in a way that speaks to making a more competitive marketplace," he said.

President Obama, Huntsman said, needs to get "the daily economic reports on where we're weak and what needs to be done, and it isn't government providing more stimulus and creating artificiality, it's government facilitating the 10th Amendment of the constitution, which allows local governments to basically determine their own destiny."