Romney Campaign Press Release - In Case You Missed It: Governor Romney On The Need To Lower Taxes

Governor Mitt Romney

Fox Business Network's "Cavuto"

October 15, 2007

Fox News' Neil Cavuto: "Now, he's the only GOP candidate so far to sign this no-tax pledge. Does he remember what happened to President Bush's father? So I asked him: is he nuts?"

Governor Mitt Romney: "Well, you have to stand for something and indicate what your priorities and your principles are and, in this setting, we're taking in enough money. The government is not taxing too little, it is spending too much. My priority is to rein in spending."

Cavuto: "So you can never see a situation where you might have to abandon that pledge?"

Governor Romney: "If King Kong attacks California, why, we'd obviously have to reconsider, but that's not..."

Cavuto: "What about a multi-year recession?"

Governor Romney: "Raising taxes is not the right answer for a multi-year recession. Major recessions would require reducing taxes, the right way to get our economy?"

Cavuto: "So there's no variable?"

Governor Romney: "The key is to keep our tax burden down so you grow the economy. A growing economy creates the revenues that government needs, and as long as you rein in spending so that spending is growing at a slower rate than the economy – then you have a stronger and stronger future."

Cavuto: "No one can get spending under control, Governor..."

...

Cavuto: "Would you ever envision a scenario where you'd entertain [raising taxes]?"

Governor Romney: "No, no the right answer is not to raise taxes on the American people and whether you're talking about capital gains tax or the ordinary income tax or the death tax or the Social Security tax, you don't want to raise taxes on people. We're taxing enough. The question is how do we spend our money more wisely and which programs are actually effective.

"When I came into the Olympics, for instance, I found out we had to cut our budget by $200 million and people said that's impossible. But you know, we did it. It took us a long time, we worked it through, we looked at all the things we were doing, we said, 'These are nice things to do, nice to have, but they're not need-to-have.' And in a country like ours, given the challenges we face globally, we're going to have to cut back to the need-to-have programs; the true safety-net programs, our military programs, but other sort of Congressional ideas that have been hanging around for years that aren't getting a lot done, we're going to pare some of those back or eliminate them all together.

To watch Governor Romney, please see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FN_dfXhSaQ