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Rick Santorum: top 5 unorthodox views

Rick Santorum must try to prevent Mitt Romney from securing a majority of delegates before the Republican convention in August, and then have a contested convention. In many cases, his positions mirror Mr. Romney’s, but here are five of Mr. Santorum’s most unorthodox views.   

5. No corporate taxes for manufacturers

Charles Rex Arbogast/AP/File
Rick Santorum shakes hands with a customer during a campaign stop at the Bemidji, Minn., Woolen Mills store, the manufacturer of the official Santorum for president sweater vest.

  • By Linda Feldmann Staff writer

As a proud son of working-class Pennsylvania, Santorum treats manufacturers differently in his tax-cut proposal. While he would cut the regular corporate rate in half – from 35 percent to 17.5 percent – he would eliminate corporate taxes altogether for manufacturers.

Santorum argues that that this would spur middle-income job creation and create a job multiplier effect for workers.

This all sounds rather Obama-esque. The president, too, wants to build up American manufacturing with an array of tax breaks that would keep jobs from fleeing overseas. To many Republicans, including Romney, special tax treatment for the manufacturing sector sounds like picking winners and losers – a big-government approach to economic policy.

Santorum argues that the government’s tax and regulatory policy is making manufacturing in the US uncompetitive, pushing jobs offshore.

“So if the government is causing the problem, then government has a responsibility to fix the problem,” Santorum says.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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