Governor Rick Perry on Rebooting His Presidential Campaign

Source: Fox News

The following is a rush transcript of the October 30, 2011, edition of “Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace.” This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

TEXAS GOV. RICK PERRY, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you and welcome to Texas. I hope you enjoyed your stay.

WALLACE: We have so far.

You have dropped in the polls from a high of 38 percent when you got in August, to a low of 6 percent in one of the polls this week. Your new campaign staffers talk about trying to reboot Perry 2.0.

So, what’s the message you want to give to voters as you try to get them to give you a second look?

PERRY: Yes, for the first eight weeks we were traveling across the country, just shaking hands, introducing ourselves, and people knew two things that I was a governor of state of Texas and I had a beautiful and smart wife. In the last two weeks now, they’ve actually got to put the meat on the bone, if you will. We laid out our jobs and energy plan, 1.2 million Americans back to work, opening up our federal lands and our waters for energy exploration, getting this country back truly secure from hostile countries that we’re buying foreign oil from.

Then we laid out just this last week, people are just getting their arms around our “Cut and Balance and Grow” plan where we talk about 20 percent flat tax, where we talk about how to cut the spending, how we grow this economy. And I think when Americans take a look at that, they’re going to go — you know what, not only is it a great plan, this fellow has got the record as the governor of Texas for 10 years of doing it. And that’s who we need in the White House, who’s got the courage to stand in the gap and put these tax reforms in place.

WALLACE: But why should voters — and some have certainly been paying attention in the last couple of months. We have 6 million people who watched the last FOX debate. Why should those voters disregard the last two months — quite frankly, your poor performance in the debates and some parts of your record on immigration, in-state tuition, the HPV vaccine that didn’t turn out to be as conservative as they might have hoped?

PERRY: Well, when you take a look at the — I readily admit I’m not the best debater in the world. With as many debate as we got coming up, I may end up being a pretty good debater before it’s all been said and done.

But when they look at the record, when they look at what we’ve done, nobody has been stronger on immigration than I have. You want to take the issue of whether or not governors have to deal with tough and hard issues because the federal government has absolutely failed at securing that border, and then we have to deal with that. I readily respect that and I would not tell any state they need to do a particular thing on that as we did in the state of Texas.

But whether it’s putting Texas ranger recon teams, $400 million, on that border, vetoing driver’s license bill for illegals, whether it was passing a voters identification bill before you can vote. There’s not anybody on that state that’s any tougher, any right on on the immigration issues than I am.

WALLACE: Let’s talk about the debates, though. Your staff indicated this weekend that you’re going to skip some, but the news overnight is you’ve signed up for the next five debates, which take you through November and into early December. But you told Bill O’Reilly this week that you felt it was a mistake to participate in any of them. Why?

PERRY: Well, I said that 18 debates is, I think, way too many debates frankly. It’s an incredible amount of time and preparation and what have you.

I really like getting out and being able to talk with people, just like I’m talking with you today where you have time to lay out your ideas. We got a great debater, a smooth politician in the White House right now. That’s not working out very good for America.

If you want to know how somebody is going to perform in the future, take a look at their past. And as governor of the state of Texas, we created more jobs in the state than any other state in the country. And I think that’s what Americans are really interested in.

People sitting around the coffee table today, the kitchen table, and they’re going to — how are we going to get this country back working again? I’ve laid out the plan, I got the courage and I got the record to put it in place.

WALLACE: We’re going to get to your plan and drill down to it in a moment, but I still want to focus on these debates, because what I’ve heard in e-mails I got from a lot of conservative voters they say, OK, maybe he’s not the greatest debater, but we need somebody next fall where there’s going to be these three big debates, 100 million people watching each time, who’s going to be able to get up on that stage with Barack Obama and make the case against him. And they worry based on your performance that you are not that man.

PERRY: Well, I’m not worried a bit that I’ll be able to stand on the stage with Barack Obama and draw a very bright line, a real contrast between an individual who’s lost 2.5 million jobs for this country, someone who is signaling to our opponents when we’re going to pull out of a particular war zone, an individual who has taken an experiment with the American economy and turned it into absolute Frankenstein experience. I think I will stand on the stage and draw a clear contrast with Barack Obama.

WALLACE: OK. You did propose a major tax reform plan this week, and as I said, we got some time. So, let’s drill down into some of the details of it. You give people a choice, a 20 percent flat tax, or they can stay in the current system. Now, one assumes that most people are going to figure it out and decide to go with the plan that they pay the fewer taxes, less in taxes.

Your campaign said and I sent it out to a private acting firm, this would mean $ 4.7 trillion less in revenue over the first six years, from 2014 to 2020. Doesn’t the Perry plan blow a hole in the deficit in?

PERRY: You got to look at the spending cuts as well and you have to look at the dynamics of the growth that goes on here. I mean, you can’t just take one piece of this and say here’s the plan. It’s not. This is a plan that gives people an option and I think a good option, to be able to do their taxes on a post card — literally taking that 20 percent tax — flat tax, deducting mortgage, deducting charitable, deducting (INAUDIBLE) taxes, $12,500 for each dependent, subtracting it and sending it in — I mean, literally on a postcard. It’s that simple to put it on that postcard right there. That’s it.

And then, people have the confidence — people have the confidence, the job creators, this plan is about getting people back to work, putting the confidence back in the American entrepreneur to know that the regulations are not going to be there, that these tax burdens.

You know who’s going to hate this more than anybody, Chris? The Washington lobbyist that have been carving out all of these corporate tax loopholes, they’ve been manipulating our tax code, make it simple and put those guys out of business. I guarantee you, that’s the type of approach that Americans are looking for, a simple tax code corporate tax rate of the 20 percent as well, bring those corporate tax proceeds back from offshore at 5.25 percent.

And we will balance that budget in 2020. No one says it’s going to be easy, but we need a president who has a commitment to that, who’s got a track record of doing that and I have.

WALLACE: All right. A couple of quick questions to that. You talk about simplicity. But the fact is, a lot of people would have to calculate their taxes the old way, they have to calculate their taxes with the alternative minimum tax, they have to calculate their taxes with the new 20 percent. Far from being simple, you might have to calculate your taxes, it’s going to be a boon for my accountant, three ways to figure out the cheapest.

PERRY: I don’t think that’s not the case at all. I think most Americans know right off the top of their heads they’re going to take that 20 percent flat tax, they’re going to take their deductions and they’re going to send that in. They’re not going to have to go ask an accountant or a lawyer.

They maybe some folks out there that want to go ask those accountants, go ask those lawyers, that’s their business. That’s the great thing about the choice here.

But this will substantively change the IRS as we know it today.

WALLACE: OK. Let’s talk about this question of growth because, as I say, your campaign says, static scoring, which is just going with the numbers and the assumptions as they are, almost $5 trillion less in revenue over the first six years. Now, your campaign says, yes, but you got to get economic growth and that’s going to end up being a $1 trillion more.

Here’s the problem with that — everybody agrees that if you lower taxes, you do increase economic growth. But even conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation say almost never do tax cuts pay for themselves. That you still end up, you may get some increased economic growth, but you still end up with lower revenue.

PERRY: And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with lower revenue. I think Americans are ready for Washington, D.C. to quit spending money.