WINDSOR HEIGHTS, Iowa—At a summer cookout here Tuesday evening, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio outlined the economic policies he would enact if elected president.
“I’m running for president not because I think America’s doomed,” Rubio said. “I don’t believe America is doomed. I’m running for president because I believe that we are leaving on the table unfulfilled potential. That today we are settling for less than what we fully can be.”
Rubio spoke on how his policies would embrace globalization and technology so that the U.S. can compete globally in the 21st century.
Rubio says that as the world has changed, America has not changed with it; policies need to reflect the “new reality.”
Increased access to training and education for lower and middle-income Americans would help boost growth, he said. Speaking on higher education, Rubio stated that sometimes four-year degrees lead to jobs that can be done without an education.
To combat that trend, Rubio said that America needs to embrace vocational programs to allow Americans to get technical or trade jobs.
“Globalization is real,” Rubio said. “We cannot be satisfied with a country that’s diminished in its prestige and its influence on the global stage.”
Rubio also said he would allows veterans looking to enter the workforce the opportunity to be able to get college credit for what they already know if they choose to go back to school and get a degree.
Sen. Marco Rubio takes a photo with Iowans in Windsor Heights Tuesday evening. (Photo: Leah Jessen/The Daily Signal)
As another economic remedy, Rubio would plan “to have a tax code that allows us to compete again.”
“We will have a tax code that says to businesses, ‘The more money you invest back in your business, the more people you hire, the more you pay them, the less you will owe the government in taxes,’” Rubio said.
Rubio says he would reduce the corporate tax rates to 25 percent and permit companies to bring overseas revenue back to the U.S. without additional taxation.
Rubio has authored a “pro-growth” and “pro-family” tax plan with Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, that would keep the top individual tax rate at 35 percent and eliminate the estate tax, among other things.
If a tax code is put in place that makes the U.S. globally competitive, restrictions are put on regulations that “strangle our economy” and the national debt gets under control, Rubio said, “The United States of America in the 21st century will be the single greatest place in the history of mankind.”
“We have a potential not just to be as good as we’ve even been,” Rubio said. “We have a potential to be greater than we’ve ever been.”
