Romney Campaign Press Release - Rep. Dave Camp: Romney's Plan "An Important Step Forward" in Fundamental Tax Reform

"I really just want to make a couple of comments and first is how encouraged I am by this bold economic plan that Governor Romney has introduced. I've obviously been working on tax reform for the last year and several months, we've had about fifteen hearings in the Ways and Means Committee on it and his cut in marginal rates—his across the board 20 percent cut in marginal rates—I think is really an important step forward in comprehensive and fundamental tax reform." — Rep. Dave Camp

Rep. Dave Camp and Professor Gary Wolfram

"Restoring America's Promise — Michigan" Press Conference Call

February 24, 2012

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Highlights From The "Restoring America's Promise — Michigan" Press Conference Call

REP. DAVE CAMP: "Well thank you, Amanda, and Gary, it's good to be on the call with you as well. Thank you all for joining the call. I really just want to make a couple of comments and first is how encouraged I am by this bold economic plan that Governor Romney has introduced. I've obviously been working on tax reform for the last year and several months, we've had about fifteen hearings in the Ways and Means Committee on it and his cut in marginal rates—his across the board 20 percent cut in marginal rates—I think is really an important step forward in comprehensive and fundamental tax reform. First of all, this is pro-growth and it's going to be about growth and opportunity. He obviously is presenting this in a way that will be fiscally responsible. That he will not increase the size of the deficit and will really help create jobs. The other important point I think is that he's also addressing corporate tax reform and what's important is a lot of entities now, most, a majority, in fact, file as individuals, so it's important that he's doing this individual across the board cut. But also he's addressing the inability of our global companies, U.S. companies doing business abroad, to really be competitive. So I think it's important that he's lowering the corporate rate, but also moving to a territorial tax system. We tax on a worldwide basis right now, regardless of where the money's earned. And that really makes it difficult for our American companies to compete abroad, but more importantly for them to bring back to the U.S. the profits they earn overseas. Estimates are there's as much as a trillion dollars stranded overseas and if we don't get that back to the U.S., invested here, created jobs here, it will be invested overseas. So I think those are just a couple of key points. I think this is really a game-changer in terms of the presidential race and I just appreciate everyone being on the call and now I'll turn it over to Professor of Economics Gary Wolfram."

PROF. GARY WOLFRAM: "Well thank you all for being here and nice to be on the phone with Congressman Camp again. The main thing for me is how this makes sense economically. As Dave pointed out, the reduction in marginal rates is vital because any economic text is going to tell you that is what affects people's behavior. What you want to do is you want to create incentives to innovate and I think what's been bogged down in this whole thing is tax cuts for the rich and worrying about them. The point is not to worry about the tax cuts for the current Bill Gates, but for the kid that's sitting in my classroom thinking about taking on all sorts of risk in order to innovate, to create something like Bill Gates did. They will have a greater incentive to do that, if, when they succeed, they're going to be taxed less than if they are taxed a lot more. So, the tax cuts, at the higher end, are not necessarily there for the people that are already there, in fact, they're probably not. They're for the people that will be there and the only way that you can get there is by producing stuff for other people. The reason that Zuckerberg is so wealthy is because 850 million people use his product. I think the other thing about this is that Governor Romney is taking on the third rail of politics in that noting that entitlement reform is vitally important. The unfunded liabilities in Social Security and Medicare are enormous. It depends on who you're talking to but certainly in the order of 65 trillion dollars and so the fact that he is willing to point this out and willing to say, yeah, we need to do something about this I think shows bold leadership and it is the type of thing that you really need to do in order to restore our debt viabilities and to get us on the road to economic growth."