Tim Pawlenty formally launched his campaign for president on Monday with a straight talk message explicitly geared to tackle sacred cows in Iowa, Florida, New York and Washington.
“Politicians are often afraid that if they’re too honest, they might lose an election,” the former Minnesota governor told a town hall here on a terrace of the State Historical Building. “I’m afraid that in 2012, if we’re not honest enough, we may lose our country.”
As governor of Minnesota, Pawlenty said, he had reduced ethanol subsidies, and he vowed that they could be drawn down “gradually” and “fairly.”
The next stop on Pawlenty’s straight talk tour will be on Tuesday in Florida, where he’ll tell young people and seniors that the country must “gradually raise” the Social Security retirement age. He called for means testing Social Security’s annual cost-of-living adjustment, instituting pay-for-performance incentives in Medicare and block granting Medicaid to the states.
Then he’ll be off to Wall Street.
“I’m going to New York City, to tell Wall Street that if I’m elected, the era of bailouts, handouts, and carve outs are over,” he said. “No more subsidies, no more special treatment. No more Fannie and Freddie, no more TARP, and no more ‘too big to fail.’”
Pawlenty will finish off in Washington, where he’ll “remind the federal bureaucracy that government exists to serve its citizens, not its employees.”
“The truth is, people getting paid by the taxpayers shouldn’t get a better deal than the taxpayers themselves,” he said. “That means freezing federal salaries, transitioning federal employee benefits, and downsizing the federal workforce as it retires. It means paying public employees for results, not just seniority.”
And in a nod to South Carolina, an early primary state that has been roiled in a dispute with the National Labor Relations Board, Pawlenty took on the unions, saying bluntly, “no card check – not now and not ever.” He said the National Labor Relations Board “will never again tell an American company where it can and can’t do business.”
Drawing on his gubernatorial resume, Pawlenty told the crowd that Minnesota and Washington deal with the same issues — though in very different ways.
“In Washington, Barack Obama has consistently stood for higher taxes, more spending, more government, more powerful special interests, and less individual freedom,” he said. “In Minnesota, I cut taxes, cut spending, instituted health care choice and performance pay for teachers, reformed our union benefits, and appointed constitutional conservatives to the Supreme Court.”
“That is how you lead a liberal state in a conservative direction,” he said, pushing the idea of the broad appeal his campaign is touting as an argument for getting him the nomination.
That effort will begin here in Iowa, which his campaign has identified as a must-win and which Pawlenty was visiting for the 14th time on Monday. So far he’s hit 13 of the state’s 99 counties and deployed a number of experienced GOP operatives to kick off his ground game.
But despite building his campaign infrastructure for the past two years, Pawlenty is still polling single digits in early polls. Most of those, though, were based on a field that included Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour, Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump — all of whom have since pulled the plug on their candidacies.
“Politicians are often afraid that if they’re too honest, they might lose an election,” the former Minnesota governor told a town hall here on a terrace of the State Historical Building. “I’m afraid that in 2012, if we’re not honest enough, we may lose our country.”
His first bit of honesty was for the Iowans: The federal government must phase out ethanol subsidies — key in this corn-heavy state — in order to drive more investment and innovation in the industry.
“We need to get government out,” he said. “We also need the government out of the business of handing out favors and special deals. The free market, not freebies from politicians, should decide a company’s success. So, as part of a larger reform, we need to phase out subsidies across all sources of energy and all industries, including ethanol. We simply can’t afford them anymore.”As governor of Minnesota, Pawlenty said, he had reduced ethanol subsidies, and he vowed that they could be drawn down “gradually” and “fairly.”
The next stop on Pawlenty’s straight talk tour will be on Tuesday in Florida, where he’ll tell young people and seniors that the country must “gradually raise” the Social Security retirement age. He called for means testing Social Security’s annual cost-of-living adjustment, instituting pay-for-performance incentives in Medicare and block granting Medicaid to the states.
Then he’ll be off to Wall Street.
“I’m going to New York City, to tell Wall Street that if I’m elected, the era of bailouts, handouts, and carve outs are over,” he said. “No more subsidies, no more special treatment. No more Fannie and Freddie, no more TARP, and no more ‘too big to fail.’”
Pawlenty will finish off in Washington, where he’ll “remind the federal bureaucracy that government exists to serve its citizens, not its employees.”
“The truth is, people getting paid by the taxpayers shouldn’t get a better deal than the taxpayers themselves,” he said. “That means freezing federal salaries, transitioning federal employee benefits, and downsizing the federal workforce as it retires. It means paying public employees for results, not just seniority.”
Pawlenty avoided any direct mention of his potential GOP primary rivals beyond citing his “different approach” to taking on Obama’s failures.
“No president deserves to win an election by dividing the American people — picking winners and losers, protecting his own party’s spending and cutting only the other guy’s; pitting classes, and ethnicities, and generations against each other,” he said.Drawing on his gubernatorial resume, Pawlenty told the crowd that Minnesota and Washington deal with the same issues — though in very different ways.
“In Washington, Barack Obama has consistently stood for higher taxes, more spending, more government, more powerful special interests, and less individual freedom,” he said. “In Minnesota, I cut taxes, cut spending, instituted health care choice and performance pay for teachers, reformed our union benefits, and appointed constitutional conservatives to the Supreme Court.”
“That is how you lead a liberal state in a conservative direction,” he said, pushing the idea of the broad appeal his campaign is touting as an argument for getting him the nomination.
That effort will begin here in Iowa, which his campaign has identified as a must-win and which Pawlenty was visiting for the 14th time on Monday. So far he’s hit 13 of the state’s 99 counties and deployed a number of experienced GOP operatives to kick off his ground game.
But despite building his campaign infrastructure for the past two years, Pawlenty is still polling single digits in early polls. Most of those, though, were based on a field that included Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour, Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump — all of whom have since pulled the plug on their candidacies.