The summer’s over, and 2012 contenders are putting their platforms to work. Days before President Obama is scheduled to deliver his jobs speech to a joint session of Congress, Republican presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman released op-eds in USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, detailing their plans to get America back to work.
Romney’s piece in USA Today teased a jobs-creation proposal he is set to unveil. The 59-part plan includes eliminating “taxes on interest, dividends, and capital gains for middle-income taxpayers.” The former Massachusetts governor, continuing to differentiate himself as a private-industry candidate, said of the incumbent, “The contrast between what the Obama administration has done and what I would do as president could not be starker,” but he did not name competitors in his own party.
Huntsman introduced a vastly different tax plan in his op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.
His plan for individual taxpayers would slash rates at their base, rather than the rates on accumulated interest, dividends, and capital gains. The former Utah governor proposed taxing individuals at rates of 8, 14, and 23 percent. Huntsman, like Romney, attacked the National Labor Relations Board for filing suit against Boeing for choosing South Carolina, a right-to-work state, for the site of its next plant. Romney said he would not tolerate such action, while Hunstman vowed that if he were elected president, he would replace the NLRB's general counsel and “its board if necessary.”
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