Fox News’ Chris Wallace stepped up the skepticism of Tim Pawlenty’s wildly optimistic economic plan on Sunday, asking the former governor how he would achieve his goals, and whether his proposed deep tax cuts would, “blow a hole in the national deficit.”
In a nearly half hour interview, Wallace repeatedly pressed Pawlenty to explain how he would accomplish the unprecedented decade of 5% annual growth he claims his policies would spark. At each turn, Pawlenty remained vague on the details of how exactly he’d do that, instead deferring to broad criticisms of President Obama.
“Well, this is an aspiration,” Pawlenty said when asked when in history the economy had ever grown so robustly. “It’s a big goal, and it’s a stretch goal.”
“So, I don’t buy this defeatist, declinist Obama attitude that America should just accept its place as an anemic laggard,” he added.
Central to Pawlenty’s plan are major tax cuts which the Tax Policy Center has said would result in $11.6 trillion less in revenue over the next decade. According to Pawlenty, those cuts would spur major private sector growth and thus a reinvigorated economy.
Wallace was unconvinced, and asked again whether Pawlenty’s plan was realistic.
“Is it declinist to doubt the 5 percent number, or is it just a realist to doubt the 5 percent number?” Walace asked.
This time, however, he also noted that the two recent instances when the U.S. economy grew by five percent or more annually — two cases Pawlenty cited as proof his plan could succeed — both came after tax increases, not cuts. That led to a brief back and forth, with Pawlenty insisting that his plan had to be viewed as a whole for it to make sense, with the focus covering both the tax cuts and spending cuts, to understand how he would boost economic output.
But as the conversation shifted to the spending side, Wallace raised even more questions about where Pawlenty would come up with his promised savings. According to Pawlenty’s plan, he would reduce government spending form its current level as 24% of gross domestic product to 18% of GDP.
“According to The Wall Street Journal, that would mean $1 trillion a year in annual spending cuts. Where are you going to get $1 trillion a year?” Wallace asked.
Pawlenty’s answer encapsulated his response tactic throughout the interview, as he sidestepped the question’s main thrust to attack instead Obama:
Well, Chris, they are spending $3.5 trillion in federal outlays currently, and they’re taking in $2.2 trillion. Recently, President Obama spent about $800 billion in surplus and then he refuses to reform entitlement payments now or over the course of the next 10 years or beyond. So, one of the things he could have done to address the deficit — by the way, when he ran for president, when in fact he became president March of 2009, he said, ‘I’ll cut the deficit in half during my first term.’ That was President Obama’s words. So, add that to the list of big promises he made to the country and broke them all. And then he went and spent ourselves into oblivion.
When pressed yet again, Pawlenty offered, in general terms, how he would find savings in several places including entitlement programs.
After the budget sparring, Pawlenty also used the interview to take a swipe at Mitt Romney one day ahead of Monday’s Republican presidential debate.
“President Obama said that he designed Obamacare after Romneycare and basically made it Obamneycare. And so, we now have the same features — essentially the same features,” Pawlenty said. “The president’s own words is that he patterned in large measure Obamacare after what happened in Massachusetts. And what I don’t understand is they both continue to defend it.”
Watch the video below:
