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I've been really clear about this. If you want to be president, you should run for president. We should select our nominee from among the people who are running for president. Clear and simple. So no, I am not going to be the president. I am not going to be the nominee.
It all started off with stirring speeches, Greek columns, the thrill of something new. Now all that's left is a presidency adrift, surviving on slogans that already seem tired, grasping at a moment that has already passed, like a ship trying to sail on yesterday's wind.
We want to have a system where people can come here and work - go back and forth if they want to... so that we have an open door to the people who want to come and contribute to our country, who want to come and make a difference in their families' lives and our economy.
To borrow a phrase from my friend Erskine Bowles on the Fiscal Commission, we are the healthiest looking horse in the glue factory. That means America is still a step ahead of the European nations who are confronting a debt crisis, of Japan that's in its second lost decade.
We think that`s necessary just as a foundation for economic growth. It`s not the jobs in and of themselves, which you do make by building bridges and things like this, but it`s the economic growth that comes from having a modern infrastructure that is in dire need of repair.
To my great disappointment, it appears that the politics of division are making a big comeback. Many Americans share my disappointment - especially those who were filled with great hope a few years ago, when then-Senator Obama announced his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois.
There are a lot of different ways of getting Mexico to contribute to doing this. And there are different ways of defining how exactly they pay for it. [Donald Trump] has a promise that he made to the American people which is to secure our border. A wall is a big part of that.
And if small businesspeople say they made it on their own, all they are saying is that nobody else worked seven days a week in their place. Nobody showed up in their place to open the door at five in the morning. Nobody did their thinking, and worrying, and sweating for them.
There are various different kinds of conservatives and different kinds of Republicans. We all come from different corners of our party. The key here is not only to unify and merge these approaches, but to also invite everyone else in America to get us focused on our solutions.
I think what matters is that we have to show people that we are an inclusive society that-that-that we want everyone to succeed. And I think there's more that all of us as leaders have got to do to be inclusive with people and make people feel like they're included in society.
We`re talking of passing the legislation that repeals and replaces Obamacare with a patient-centered system that brings down prices and expands choices, so people have more - better access to more affordable healthcare choices and options, but that takes time to put into place.
Obama is trying to paint us as a caricature, as if we're some bizarre individualists who are hardcore libertarians. It's a false dichotomy and intellectually lazy. Of course we believe in government. We think government should do what it does really well, but that it has limits.
There are instances in which American interests align with Russia and there are those where they don't. And so the question is, can we help steer Russia to being something that doesn't conflict with our interests and something that - and a country that aligns with our interests?
I think [Donald Trump] does understand that. We talked a great deal about the separation on power and the constitution. And we`re very excited about what he`s doing because what he`s doing is pulling back what we see as unconstitutional executive actions from the past presidents.
I tend to avoid the shows that focus on politics, just to get a break from it all, i tried watching the first couple episodes of 'House of Cards,' but I thought it was way over the top. Members of Congress aren't anything like Frank Underwood. Most of us are far less interesting.
We need to upgrade and modernize America`s infrastructure.Our budget is going to have to figure out how to balance those priorities and pay for it and our big goal is to leverage the private sector dollars as much as possible so that the public taxpayer isn`t paying for all of this.
President Obama is the kind of politician who puts promises on the record, and then calls that the record. But we are four years into this presidency. The issue is not the economy as Barack Obama inherited it, not the economy as he envisions it, but this economy as we are living it.
We want to have trade agreements that give us a level playing field, get other countries to respect the rule of law, intellectual property rights, lower their taxes to our barriers, that`s good for us, and that is something that I do believe that President [Donald] Trump agrees with.
You're going to hear a lot from President Obama and yes, from Joe Biden, you're hearing a little bit about Medicare these days. What they will not tell you is they turned Medicare into a piggybank to fund 'Obamacare.' They took $716 billion dollars to pay for the 'Obamacare' program.
We believe a renewed commitment to limited government will unshackle our economy and create millions of new jobs and opportunities for all people, of every background, to succeed and prosper. Under this approach, the spirit of initiative - not political clout - determines who succeeds.
I don't want to get into the 'who's a hostage-taker' discussion here, but what is the estate tax? It's a double tax on death. Economists will tell you that it's really not a tax that soaks the rich, but it's a tax on capital that deprives business investment and therefore job creation.
More American companies are getting bought by foreign firms or they`re becoming foreign firms or they`re outsourcing. Right now the tax code says if you want to make something in another country and re-import it back into America, go ahead and do that. We don`t want to incentivize that.
I reject her [Ayn Rand's] philosophy. It's an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person's view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don't give me Ayn Rand.
Each budgets reflect our priorities, reflect our principles, reflect our vision. We believe in balancing the budget. We believe in getting government to live within its means. We believe in pro-growth economic policies, energy exploration, fixing our entitlements before they go bankrupt.
President Obama was asked not long ago to reflect on any mistakes he might have made. He said, well, 'I haven't communicated enough.' He said his job is to 'tell a story to the American people' - as if that's the whole problem here? He needs to talk more, and we need to be better listeners?
Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama. An obligation we have to our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed, all to pay for a new entitlement we didn't even ask for. The greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare, and we're going to stop it.
President Obama clearly cannot run on his record. All he's offering is more of the same. That's not good. Look at the economy. It's stagnating. And so, what they're now going to try and do is bring this campaign down to little things, distractions, distortions, smear, fear, anger, frustration.
We are all representatives of the American people. We all do town hall meetings. We all talk to our constituents. And I've got to tell you, the American people are engaged. And if you think they want a government takeover of health care, I would respectfully submit you're not listening to them.
President Obama's reckless defense cuts that are hanging over our cloud, hanging over the horizon could put almost 44,000 jobs at stake right here in Pennsylvania. we are not going to let that happen. You know why? Because No. 1, national defense is the first priority of the federal government.
Moving from an opposition party to a governing party comes with growing pains. And, well, we're feeling those growing pains today. Doing big things is hard. All of us. All of us, myself included, we will need time to reflect on how we got to this moment, what we could have done to do it better.
There are a lot of regulations that are really just crushing jobs. Look at the coal miners in the Rust Belt that are getting out of work. Look at the - look at the loggers and the timber workers and the paper mills in the West Coast. Look at the ranchers or farmers in the Midwest with regulations.
We think there are better solutions to fighting poverty because we see what the War on Poverty has produced. It produced tens of trillions of dollars in spending. It has been a 51-year exercise, and yet the poverty rates in America today are not much better than when we started the War on Poverty.
This is a government takeover of our healthcare system. It is the government basically running the entire healthcare system, turning large insurers into de facto public utilities, depriving people of choice, depriving people of options, raising people's prices, raising taxes when we need new jobs.
What Donald Trump has been concerned about, what he`s talked about, is when we get deals that don`t level the playing field, when we get deals that aren`t the kinds of best deals we can get, we want good deals, and those are free trade deals to lower the barriers between trade between two countries.
What matters to me is that I do what I think is right and I see, I'm a numbers guy, that's my attitude. I know we have a debt tsunami coming, we are bankrupting this country and I'm in a position where I can actually advance ideas to prevent that from happening. That's exactly what I should be doing.
In a clean break from the Obama years, and frankly from the years before this president, we will keep federal spending at 20 percent of GDP, or less. That is enough. The choice is whether to put hard limits on economic growth, or hard limits on the size of government, and we choose to limit government.
If we keep kicking the can down the road, if we follow the president's lead or if we pass the Senate budget, then we will have a debt crisis. Then everybody gets hurt. You know who gets hurt first and the worst in a debt crisis? The poor, the elderly. That's what we're trying to prevent from happening.
If you can clean up the cesspool of the tax code and give us a pro-growth tax code, that is how you grow the economy. That`s how you take power and money out of Washington and give it back to the people and we are so excited. We have a president [Donald Trump] that is here to work with us in doing that.
My dad died when I was young. He was a good and decent man. There are a few things he would say that have just always stuck with me. He'd say, "Son, you're either part of the problem or part of the solution." Well, regrettably, President Obama has become part of the problem, and Mitt Romney is the solution.
This debt crisis coming to our country. The wall and tidal wave of debt that is befalling our nation. Medicare and Social Security go bankrupt within ten years, we have a debt that is looming so high that in the last year of President Obama's budget just the interest payments on our debt is $916 billion dollars.
Real social progress is always a widening of the circle of concern and protection. It's respect and empathy overtaking blindness and indifference. It's understanding that by the true measure, we are all neighbors and countrymen, call to each one of us to know what is right and kind and just and to go and do likewise.
Obamacare rewrote Medicare... so if you're going to repeal and replace Obamacare, you have to address those issues as well... What people don't realize is that Medicare is going broke, that Medicare is going to have price controls... So you have to deal with those issues if you're going to repeal and replace Obamacare.
And when you look at the twentieth-century experiment with collectivism-that Ayn Rand, more than anybody else, did such a good job of articulating the pitfalls of statism and collectivism-you can't find another thinker or writer who did a better job of describing and laying out the moral case for capitalism than Ayn Rand.
The perfection of our union, especially our commitment to equality of opportunity, has been a story of constant striving to live up to our Founding principles. This is what Abraham Lincoln meant when he said, 'In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve.'
The President didn't offer any clarity in his latest speech about what he would do to tackle our nation's debt before it tackles us and it's still not clear how he'll keep Medicare from going bankrupt. One thing is clear though, Barack Obama isn't interested in governing or putting forward solutions to fix our nation's problems.
When you question this war on poverty, you get all the criticisms from adherents to the status quo who just don't want to see anything change. We got to have the courage to face that down, just as we did in the welfare reform of the late 1990s, and if we succeeded, we can help resuscitate this culture and get people back to work.
There's no "agreement." The president Donald Trump and the chief of staff called me from Air Force One today to discuss what was discussed - and it was a discussion, not an agreement or negotiation. We need border security and enforcement as part of any agreement. I think that's something the Democrats are beginning to understand.
That's what the Romney plan is all about, how to get jobs created, how to get this debt and deficit under control, how to revive small businesses so we can create jobs, and how to bring growth and opportunity to society instead of this class warfare, instead of speaking to people like they're stuck in some class or station in life.
Millions of young Americans have graduated from college during the Obama presidency, ready to use their gifts and get moving in life. Half of them can't find the work they studied for, or any work at all. So here's the question: Without a change in leadership, why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?
The secret to understanding me is, I'm not trying to be anybody other than who I actually am. People want candid, refreshing leadership. And I've always tried to go with solutions. You know, I've always tried to say, here's how we get our economy growing, here's why we get our debt under control. That's what Mitt Romney is offering.