Republican presidential contender Bobby Jindal criticized what he says will be Hillary Clinton’s economic plan: “More taxes, more spending, more regulations.”
Appearing on Fox News Sunday over the weekend while campaigning in Iowa, Jindal told host Bret Baier that Clinton is all about “feeding a greedier and greedier government that’s going to swallow up the private sector economy.”
“There’s never enough money or power for the government, according to the left,” the Louisiana governor added.
Jindal said he credits Clinton’s rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT), with at least being honest and calling himself a socialist, while Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are deceptively turning America into a European socialist nation.
“You look at Greece. So they have too high taxes, too many regulations, underfunded pension systems, a slow growth in the private sector economy,” Jindal said. “That’s what we have under President Obama. That’s what we’d have under Secretary Clinton.”
Jindal defended his own economic record in Louisiana, stating that his administration balanced its budget for eight consecutive years without raising taxes and gave the largest tax cut in the state’s history.
He continued:
[W]e have cut our state budget 26 percent, $9 billion. Cut over 30,000 fewer state government bureaucrats. We’ve actually had eight credit upgrades. Our highest credit rating in decades. We’ve got more people working than ever before in Louisiana’s history, earning a higher income than ever before. We reversed 25 years of out-migration, seven years in a row of in-migration. Actually, you look at Louisiana’s economy, we have got $60 billion, 90,000 jobs coming into our state because of economic development wins.
As Baier observed, Jindal has been criticized for passing a significant increase in college fees which he offset with a new tax credit – according to a formula recommended by Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist.
“Because college fee increases do not technically count as a tax under Grover Norquist’s formula, Governor Jindal could claim that the tax credit, half of his plan, was a substantial new tax cut,” the Citizens for Tax Justice said, according to Baier. “Jindal could then sign an increase in the actual taxes, including cigarette taxes and other levies, without violating the [no-tax] pledge under the dubious claim that the tax portion of this package was revenue neutral.”
Jindal, however, refuted the claim, stating the tax cut was helpful to families paying college tuition.
“Look, in a lot of states, tuition is going up,” he said. “In Louisiana, we have the second lowest tuition in the South. We’re one of the best states when it comes to students graduating with student debt. This is a huge problem nationally.”
“Secondly, I would match my record against anybody in terms of actually cutting government,” Jindal continued. “We’re not slowing the growth rate. We’ve actually cut government. Our budget is 9 billion smaller than when we took office…30,000 fewer people working for state government than the day I took office…We’ve actually cut the size of government. We’ve actually grown the private sector economy.”
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