Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry says 1,300 people move into Texas every day, mainly because of the business climate he helped create there as governor of Texas for the past 11 years.
“If a state decides that they want to have a rather high tax burden or…if they wanted to have mandated insurance that everyone was required to buy, I mean you could go live in Massachusetts,” Perry said late Wednesday.
That’s a dig at rival Mitt Romney who signed a law when he was Massachusetts governor that requires Massachusetts residents to have health insurance. Romney has said it’s the solution people in his state decided upon and he has vowed to repeal the national health care mandate President Obama signed into law. Perry says the insurance mandate is an example of how the federal government has become “too intrusive.”
“That, I will suggest to you, is part of what the conversation with Americans is about at this particular point in time as we go into this 2012 presidential election,” Perry told a crowd in Mount Pleasant Wednesday. “And who is it on the stage or in the White House today who we want to lead America for the next four years?”
Sticking with Obama for another four years would be “insanity” according to Perry.
“I’m sure our founding fathers would recognize the country today, as we see what America has kind of transformed into where Washington has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger,” Perry said in Burlington this morning, “and our liberties have gotten smaller and smaller.”
About 100 people gathered to hear Perry in Burlington this morning and they applauded Perry’s promise to repeal the health care mandate.
“In my home state, $2.7 billion more every year to comply with ObamaCare,” Perry said. “My first day in office, I will sign an executive order to wipe out as much of ObamaCare as I can and introduce legislation to kill the rest of it.”
Perry is among three GOP presidential candidates who are campaigning in Iowa today.
(Theresa Rose from KILJ in Mt Pleasant and Michael Cation from KBUR in Burlington contributed to this report.)