[Baldwin:] And now I want to take you live to Columbia, South Carolina. Here he is, the Texas governor hoping to be the next president of the United States. Governor Perry talking about his flat tax plan. Take a listen.
[Perry:] These representatives of the people are helping our campaign build the right team in South Carolina as we go forward into January. And I feel pretty good about the prospects. Strong support of conservatives in South Carolina legislature, commonsense conservative message that appeals to voters here against people in South Carolina, and they understand the principle of trust and verify. They know that you can't just trust conservative rhetoric. You have to have a record to verify. I've stood by my conservative record. I'm the first governor in Texas since World War II to cut spending. I cut school property taxes by one-third. I signed the most sweeping lawsuit reform in the country. And I've done more to secure the border than any governor in Americas, dedicating some $400 million in state funds, teams of Texas rangers and local law enforcement to cut off the trafficking of drugs, weapons, people. And as president of that conservative leadership and proof that the conservative leadership works, Texas has led the way creating nearly 40 percent of the jobs in America since June of 2009.
[Jim Acosta, Cnn Political Correspondent:] Thank you, governor. Jim Acosta, CNN. Just curious, what will it take you to convince you that the president was born in this country and
[Perry:] I'll cut you off right there. That is one of the biggest distractions that there is going. We need to be talking about jobs. Somebody that wants to see my birth certificate, I'll show it to you. But that is a distraction and Americans don't really care about that, if you want to know the truth of the matter. What Americans want to talk about is jobs. Who is going to lay out a plan of which will get America working again. What I did this morning is give confidence to job creators that they know for a fact that they are going to be able to risk their capital and have a return on their investment. They know that they are not going to be losing jobs because of regulations that are tilling these jobs all across the country. That's what Americans are looking for and that's what we're going to stay focused on.
[Question:] Governor?
[Perry:] Yes, sir.
[Question:] Any concern that your flat tax proposal will benefit mostly the wealthy?
[Perry:] We're interested in getting Americans back to working. If folks who have money are going to be creating those jobs, then I don't have a problem in the world with that. I think that is very, very important that we focus on getting Americans back to work. And when you put a flat tax of 20 percent in place on the personal standpoint, when you put a 20 percent flat tax in place for corporate, that is the type of confidence that Americans are looking for. When they see a president that will pull back those regulations that have been put in place since 2008 that are killing jobs, whether it's the EPA or whatever agency it may be, then they understand that here is a president that is committed to job creation. And it doesn't make any difference to me who creates those jobs. Whoever is sitting at home watching this around their kitchen table or listening on the radio and read it in the newspaper tomorrow, they are interested in having a job and having the dignity of taking care of their familiar, and that's what we're going to focus on every day.
[Question:] Sir, you proposed cutting government spending 18 percent to GDP. That would involve spending cuts of $1 trillion in one year. The committee in Congress is getting trouble getting that over ten years. Could you be specific about the trillions of dollars in cuts that
[Perry:] What we're talking about doing is having a balanced budget by 2020, and this plan does it. We will be releasing a report on how we get that done. And that's the issue. It's not that we're going to get it done in one year. We're going to do it over the period of the next eight years, and 2020 is the target that we're focused in on. So I don't we're going to have the budget balanced by 2020, travel across the country and pass a balanced budget for the United States constitution. I'll give you one example of how I'm laying out $100 billion that we will have in spending cuts on nondefense discretionary spending. That is the type of dollars that we can cut out of this budget. For instance, you can take the secondary and elementary department of education programs, cut them in half, and that will save you $25 billion in one year. So that is the issue that Americans are looking for, not to get bogged down into what is it going to be at year one? How are we going to get Americans back to work? How are we going to have a balanced budget by 2020? My plan does that. It doesn't nibble around the edges. This is real and substantive changes in our tax code, and it's real and substantive change on the spending and tax side. It deals with entitlements. It is across the board whether America can get back into the job creators and have the confidence that they can risk their capital and they will have a risk of return on their capital.
[Question:] Steve Forbes ran on the flat tax plan was offered in 1996 and didn't work out well for him.
[Perry:] I just happen to think when Americans look at what's happened, there's a lot that has changed since 1996 from the standpoint of our tax code in this country. We have almost $15 trillion worth of debt. You have Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley. I would repeal all of those. Those are job killers. The regulatory side of the world is what is really is hammering our job creation. Yes, it's important to get our taxes under control and have a tax system that is fair, that is simple, that is flat. How many people in America would rather have the old tax program in place, the lawyers, the accountants. It's almost $850 billion a year that we spend on taking care of the taxes today. Let's do it on a postcard. Let's do it this way. And also, you pull the regulations back that are killing jobs in America. That's what people care about. They want a president who will stand up and say, here is how we are going to get America back to work. We have done that in the 15th largest economy in Texas over the last decade. And I think Americans are looking for a president who has got a proven tax record and the courage to do exactly what this plan says.
[Question:] Governor, can you give us a postcard size answer to how your plan compares to Herman Cain's nine-nine-nine plan and Newt Gingrich's 15 percent flat tax cut.
[Perry:] Let me visit you about Herman's plan. This doesn't have a VAT tax, a value added tax. It doesn't have a national sales tax. That's the biggest difference right there. Americans do not trust Washington D.C. to have a new form of taxation. What they are looking for is simplicity. They are looking for something that is flat. They are looking for something that is fair. This plan addresses all of those. So I think when you really look at what we're talking about here from the standpoint of getting Americans confident that there's a tax plan in place that will take care of their tax needs, if you will, this postcard is the way to do it.
[Question:] Governor, is that just adding another layer to this tax plan?
[Perry:] Actually, it doesn't. I think the idea that you can pick and choose you may be a business that has for so many years, used the old system whether it was on a host of different issues, depreciations or whatever it is in that old system and you're locked into it and you think for your best interest that to continue to use all of the lawyers and all of the accountants maybe in your best interest. But for the people who don't need that, don't want that, this is the way to go.
[Question:] Do you feel good about your prospects in South Carolina? You were leading in the polls. The recent Marist poll though showed you at nine percent. What happened?
[Perry:] Well, I have always said that polls are going to go up and down. So my bet is that when Clemson or South Carolina are at half time, and it doesn't happen very often that they are behind at half time, but they are not going to call the game at half time. So we are going to continue to be working and working and we may change defense a little bit. But the fact is it's a long time to when this campaign is over with, and we're going to be talking about things like this. We got in this race late. We've laid out over the last two weeks a plan on energy and job security from that standpoint, the security of our energy industry in this country. And now we've laid out a tax plan that also is about growth and controlling spending that Americans are going to look tat and say, that's where we want to go. He's got the record of doing it in the state of Texas, and that's the kind of president we want.
[Question:] What have you all talked about?
[Perry:] As general rule, we keep our conversations private, but we talked a lot about the campaign, the time the first time he had a chance to see the tax plan. And you'll have to ask him how much he likes it but I've got to suggest to you that he understands the idea of having simplicity. He loves the idea of having someone who has a track record as the next president of the United States that knows how to stand up and say no to spending. And I shared with him as I share with people all across this country, if Congress and I'm going to do my best to work with congress. I've done that in Texas for quite some time on a lot of different pieces of legislation with Democrats and Republicans. But when they send a bill to me that spends more money than what we've got coming in, that's coming out. God bless you. Thank you.
[Baldwin:] All right. So Texas governor Rick Perry, fairly short and sweet when he was addressing what the tax plat proposal is. It's a 20 percent flat tax. Essentially he's saying, Americans, you get to choose between your current income tax rate or my 20 percent flat tax plan, unveiling this there in South Carolina whose primary is January 21, so not too far away, so certainly no coincidence that he is there in South Carolina. I want to bring Gloria Borger back into this conversation. Gloria, I know he talks about this plan. He talks about job creation. He talks about Social Security, Medicare, balancing the budget by 2020. But let's still drill down on the spending side. When it comes to reform, what specifics is he talking about?
[Borger:] Well, it's interesting because he sounds an awful lot like House budget committee chairman Paul Ryan, and that was pretty controversial. On Social Security, he generally talks about gradually raising the retirement age, about private accounts for younger workers, about allowing state and local governments to opt out. He doesn't tell us specifically how. On Medicare, gradually raising the eligibility age, perhaps making the wealthy pay more, maybe turning it partly into a voucher system. Again, like Paul Ryan, very few specifics there, just generalizations. But I think what he's trying to show is that he's serious. He's also trying to show he's really different from the other candidates out there, in particular now, Herman Cain, as you saw him take aim at Herman Cain's his tax plan.
[Baldwin:] A couple questions in, somebody said, hey, how would you compare this to Gingrich's plan or Herman Cain's plan. And we know Herman Cain has got a lot of air time recently talking nine-nine-nine. Is this Rick Perry's way of saying bring the attention back to me, I have a tax plan too?
[Borger:] It is. And he said, by the way, and this is an important point. He said people don't trust a government in Washington to raise any kind of new taxes. And the Herman Cain plan includes a nine percent national sales tax, which is something we do not currently have. The problems conservatives is with that is they say, OK, you're going to raise a new tax. Well, today, it's nine percent. Tomorrow, it could be 15 percent. So, he's saying to conservatives that is not the way to go. Don't open the door to any new form of tax, and that may have some salience with Republican primary voters.
[Baldwin:] Gloria Borger, as always, lovely having you on. Thank you so much for talking to me about this flat tax. We really appreciate it. We'll be talking about it, I'm sure, in the future. Meantime still to come, I had kind of a special interview this morning I want to share with you in just a couple of minutes where I talk to someone in space, one of three crew members currently sitting in the international space station. By the way, these guys have been up there for five months and counting. They're hoping to come home in the next month. What's in like up there, when will they come home, and what's it like? Do they miss gravity? Mike Fossum, commander of the ISS, next.