Republican candidate John Kasich is promising to eliminate the U.S. Department of Commerce if he’s elected president. Kasich said today he’s offering “reasonable stuff” that can be accomplished and he dismissed some of his competitors ideas as sheer “fantasy”.
“I’ve got them all upset now because I’ve been making comments about not the people’s personalities, but some of the policy positions of the people running for president,” Kasich said. “You know, I’m just going to kind of do what I’ve done all my career and kind of tell it like it is and we’ll see where the chips fall.”
Kasich, a former Ohio congressman, served as chairman of the House Budget Committee in the 1990s. Kasich is currently Ohio’s governor. He’s calling for reforming entitlements like Medicare and Social Security. While Kasich would increase military spending, he is calling for reforming the Pentagon bureaucracy as well.
“And we will have a tax cut plan that will be within bounds and, add it all together, we will get to a balanced budget and then we can begin to pay down debt,” Kasich said. “And why is that important? Because if we can stabilize all of that, then we can be in position where we can have the kind of job growth we want.”
Some of the other Republicans running for president have called for a so-called “flat” tax on income. Ben Carson, for example, has suggested a rate of “close to 15 percent.” Kasich said that would “blow the deficit up.”
“The danger here is picking people who are inexperienced means that you might pick somebody that doesn’t know how to do the job,” Kasich said.
Kasich prefers “the old Reagan approach” on tax policy, reducing rates for individuals, lowering the capital gains tax and keeping deductions for mortgages and charitable contributions. Kasich made his comments late this morning during taping of the “Iowa Press” program that will air on IPTV this Friday.