Ron Paul's plan: the only one that cuts debt, study shows
In Ron Paul’s latest campaign, he calls out rival Rick Santorum as being anything but the fiscal conservative he claims to be. According to a new report, the only GOP candidate capable of bringing down America’s debt is Congressman Paul himself.
Should America undergo any of the tax plans favored by the other three GOP frontrunners, the US Budget Watch predicts that America’s massive national debt will only increase. An administration governed by Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich, says the group, would fail to reverse the increasing debt and instead only add to America’s financial woes.The US Budget Watch, an offshoot of the DC-based bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, finalized their report early Thursday. “Each of these candidates has a detailed, albeit still incomplete, set of proposals to reduce both taxes and spending,” the group explains in their summation of their findings. “This report reviews those policy proposals and evaluates their impact on the federal debt.”On Wednesday night, the group suggested that even under the latest tax plans put forth this week by Romney, a White House run under his watch would see around $2.6 trillion tacked onto its debt toll by 2021. By that same year, estimates that group, a Santorum presidency could cause the debt to go up by around $4.5 trillion and a Gingrich-run America could see upwards of $7 trillion in increased debt.Under President Ron Paul, the US could see around $2 trillion taken off of future borrowing, explains the group.Taking into account several scenarios of varying risk, Paul repeatedly comes out as the true fiscal conservative in the group’s report. Estimating the debt impact of each candidate in an “intermediate-debt scenario,” the group says Congressman Paul would be the only candidate to decrease that statistic. Under a Paul plan, America could expect to see the debt impact in relation to the country’s gross domestic product decrease by 9 percent, while on the other side of the spectrum, a Gingrich White House would increase that impact by 30 percent. Estimating a low-debt scenario and a high-debt scenario, Paul emerges in all contests as the candidate that would create the least damaging climate, economically speaking, under each politician’s current proposed tax plans. Through eliminating taxes on capital gains and dividends, repealing the estate tax, cutting the federal work force and ending overseas military operations, a Paul presidency is predicted to be the one with the best impact for America’s skyrocketing debt. By ending wars alone, the group estimates that Congressman Paul could cut nearly $900 billion in a best-case scenario. Other initiatives, like privatizing the FAA and TSA, could save America $70 billion during and immediately after his administration. During Wednesday evening’s televised Republican Party debate, Paul was asked to explain why he calls Santorum a “fake” in his latest ad and refuses his claims to be a true fiscal conservative. “Because he is a fake,” responded the congressman.“No. I find it really fascinating that, when people are running for office, they're really fiscally conservative. When they're in office, they do something different,” said Paul. The congressman went after Santorum for voting in favor of the No Child Left Behind Act, which in turn caused greater spending for the US Education Department. Santorum admitted on Wednesday that he regrets his initial decision to vote for the bill.“I admit the mistake and I will not make that mistake again,” said Santorum.“So this idea of being fiscally conservative now that we're running for office and we're going to repeal something that we did before, I mean, this – it loses credibility, is what our problem is,” responded Paul.
