Charles Dharapak/AP
Romney all business about picking Cabinet
GOP presidential candidate says his lineup would emphasize private sector experience.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said on Monday that he would fill his Cabinet with people with private-sector experience, like himself, drawing a contrast with President Obama’s preference for Cabinet secretaries with government backgrounds.
In an interview with nationally syndicated conservative talk-show host Michael Medved, Romney said, “It would be a very different lineup than the president has assembled. His team is almost entirely void of anyone with any experience in the business sector, (who) understands how the economy works. I will assuredly have members of my team who will have experience in the real world, in the private sector. My Cabinet will not be filled with academics and politicians alone.”
Romney indicated he already has people in mind but offered no names, saying a number of them are currently employed and “they wouldn’t appreciate having their employers think they’re going.”
Asked about his tax plan on a day that Obama was campaigning on a proposal to raise taxes on households earning over $250,000, Romney said that in his first year in office, he would lower taxes for individuals and small businesses while limiting tax breaks for high income-earners as a way of keeping government revenues at a level necessary to fund the government.
His plan, he said, “keeps revenue coming in by limiting some of the deductions and exemptions, particularly for people at the high-income level, so we can keep the progressivity of the code. … Get our rates down, encourage growth, business startups and expansions, (that) mean jobs for middle-income Americans.”
The interview was one of several media appearances scheduled for Romney this week. In an interview with the John Fredericks Morning Show in Virginia, scheduled to air on Tuesday, Romney called Obama’s proposal to renew the Bush-era tax cuts only for those earning less than $250,000 “a massive tax increase on job creators and on small business.”
He added, “Small businesses are overwhelmingly being taxed, not at a corporate rate, but at the individual tax rate. So successful small businesses will see their taxes go up dramatically and that will kill jobs. That will be another kick in the gut to the middle class in America. We just saw a terrible jobs report, just last week, and now to add a higher tax on job creators and on small business is about the worst thing I could imagine to do.”
Also during the interview, Romney suggested that Obama’s health care overhaul, which was upheld by the Supreme Court on June 28, is designed to be the first step toward a government-run system.
“The president said, before he was elected, that it was his objective to have a single-payer system. I think that’s where he would like to go,” he said. “My own view is that if Obamacare were allowed to stand … you would see down the road private insurance getting squeezed out, and ultimately a call for a government insurance plan or a government insurance program of some kind. And ultimately it would take a lion’s share of the health market.”
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