Presidential hopeful Herman Cain says if elected he would lower the personal and corporate tax rates, and “take the capital gains tax to zero.” Cain also said Thursday on Fox News that President Barack Obama has surrounded himself with the wrong people to battle the nation’s fiscal crisis.
“It’s time to have a problem solver that knows how to apply business skills to solving the problems of this country in the White House,” Cain told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. “We have the wrong person in the White House — he has put the wrong gas in the tank of this economy — spending. We need to put some different things in the tank of this economy so we can grow it — problem-solving business skills.”
O’Reilly asked for examples of where Obama has failed.
“He did not surround himself with the right people,” Cain said. “He didn’t lower taxes. He increased regulations. If you stop right there, that’s why this economy is not growing, Bill.
“I would lower the top corporate tax rate, I would lower the personal rate, and I would also take the capital gains tax rate to zero,” he said.
O’Reilly countered that it would be difficult to get the $14 trillion debt down without any revenue from the capital gains tax.
“That assumption Bill, assumes static analysis — I’m assuming dynamic analysis, which means that if you lower taxes the right way,” he said. “Secondly, at the same time you are increasing the growth in the economy, you are taking some hard cuts on spending. You have them going in the right direction.”
Turning to foreign policy, O’Reilly asked Cain whether Obama’s plan to reduce a fraction of the troops in Afghanistan is the right strategy.
“Wrong thing to do because by taking out a trickling amount of troops out just to say he has started the withdrawal is being disingenuous to the American people and to those that are going to be left behind,” Cain said.
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