Romney: My Plan Will Create 11.5 Million Jobs

NN&V Exclusive

(Lori Piotrowski) – “America should be a jobs machine.”

“American should be on the leading edge of innovation,” explained Governor Mitt Romney, who spoke at McCandless International Trucking on Tuesday afternoon.

Governor Mitt Romney’s Jobs Rollout speech, predating the President’s jobs plan, was applauded by some 200 attendees.

Introducing the presidential candidate was John McCandless, who generously rearranged a garage/warehouse space to hold businessmen and women, campaign supporters, local officials, as well as members of the local, national, and international media.

Congressman Joe Heck stepped to the podium to introduce McCandless, who drove a Travel-all filled with tools to Las Vegas from Phoenix to open his own International Harvester dealership. McCandless, 82, is still working at his office in North Las Vegas, saying that he’s struggling with government regulations from the EPA and Department of Commerce.

Romney thanked McCandless for the opportunity to speak at a facility where “a lot of hard work occurs. It is ennobling, it is great for human beings to participate in hard work, and it is great for the country.”

Today’s event laid out Romney’s plan for jobs and economic growth, and he began by talking to the middle class. “The middle class ought to be the highest paid in the world. It should be good to be in the middle class. You should have to wonder how you’re going to pay the bills, pay for college, pay for your prescriptions. America should be a jobs machine.”

Romney took the audience back to the 1950s and 60s, when the country led the world in manufacturing. “We need to update our strategy and our economic policy to compete with the global economy. We used to be the top manufacturer, but this year, China will pass us.”

As he began to explain his plan for growth, he explained, “We did an analysis of the plan’s impact. Should I be elected and get to implement this plan, the first four years we will grow the economy by 4% each year. It will add 11.5 million new jobs.”

Romney rhetorically asked why Obama’s economic strategy was tepid. “He has a speech coming up in a few days about jobs and the economy. I can tell you what it says—I’ve seen Version 1, Version 2, Version 3, Version 4, and Version 5—and it’s not working!”

He likened the Obama strategy to using the old pay phones. “You remember when you’d put in a quarter and a person on the other end of the line would answer?”

He held up a smart phone. “Now, you talk to anyone on these! You can buy things from anywhere in the world!”

“The president is taking quarters, stuffing them into the pay phone and asking, ‘Why doesn’t this work?’ It doesn’t work, Mr. President, because it’s not hooked up anymore!”

“The president isn’t a bad guy; he just doesn’t have a clue.”

Romney’s plan, called “Day One, Job One,” contains five executive orders that he will sign his first day of office:

1. 1.      An order to pave the way to end Obamacare, directing HHS secretary to provide all 50 states with health care waivers
2. 2.      An order to cut red tape, eliminating many of the regulations that have been put into place in recent years
3. 3.      An order to boost domestic energy production to implement rapid issuance of drilling permits for oil, gas, and methods for other energy sources
4. 4.      An order to sanction China for unfair trade practices, listing that country as a currency manipulator
5. 5.      An order to empower American businesses and workers, restoring a level playing field between businesses and organized labor and eliminating PLAs

In addition, Romney has five bills he would encourage Congress to pass:

1. The American Competitiveness Act, reducing corporate income tax from 35% to 25%
2. The Open Markets Act, implementing free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea
3. The Domestic Energy Act, directing the Department of the Interior to conduct a survey of America’s energy reserves
4. The Retraining Reform Act, which would consolidate federal training programs (47 in 8 departments) and return this responsibility to the States
5. The Down Payment on Fiscal Sanity Act, which would cut non-security discretionary spending by 5%, reducing the federal budget by $20 billion

Romney’s plan was distributed to attendees in book form, and it is available on Amazon.com in Kindle format. The book also includes 59 policy proposals for jobs and economic growth.

The presidential candidate called for sanction on China for currency manipulation, saying that “It’s good to have trade as long as the people we trade with play by the rules.” In this new global economy, he explained, the U.S. needs to have trade relations with other nations. “We cannot jump into the game and compete 10 years after other countries have been trading with each other.”

He is proposing a Reagan Economic Zone of Prosperity where countries may freely trade with one another, providing they acknowledge and abide by trading regulations and honor intellectual property, patents, etc.

“The old ways have principles that last forever; we just need to update our strategies.”

Romney concluded his speech with a summation of his leadership and business skills: encouraging clients to invest in a new office supply company (Staples, which now employs 90,000 workers), turning the Salt Lake City Olympic Games into the most successful games ever (according to NBC’s Dick Ebersol), and converting Massachusett’s $3 billion deficit into a $2 billion Rainy Day Fund for his successor, without raising taxes.