Santorum Brings Presidential Campaign Tour to Gwinnett

U.S. presidential candidate Rick Santorum brought his “Faith, Family and Freedom Tour” to Gwinnett Tuesday. Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, was the second candidate presented in a forum by the Seventh District Committee of the Gwinnett Republican Party at the in Duluth.

Santorum was introduced by State Sen. Don Balfour (R-Snellville) at the noontime forum. Also in attendance were State Sen. David Shafer (R-Duluth) and Ralph Reed, former director of the Christian Coalition. Santorum noted that he and Shafer were both from Butler, PA, a small steel town in Pennsylvania.

“Small town America is an area I’ve tried to focus on,” Santorum said. “Small town values are important…they’re the foundation of our country.”

His campaign tour theme reflects his vision to restore America’s greatness through the promotion of faith, family and freedom.

America’s founding fathers created a free country, Santorum said, for “a strong, decent and moral society.”

“Our laws,” he said, “need to conform to higher law, also called natural law, Judeo-Christian law and Bible law.”

Santorum spoke for 20 minutes followed by a Q&A with attendees. His speech incorporated some of the elements of his “Made in America” economic recovery plan. America needs strong families, he said, to have a strong national economy.

Here are some of the points in Santorum’s plan:

• Cut and simplify personal income taxes by cutting the number of tax rates to just two -- 10 percent and 28 percent.
• Retain only five tax deductions for children, home mortgage interest, healthcare, retirement savings and charitable giving.
• Cut the corporate income tax rate in half from 35 percent to 17.5 percent.
• Reduce federal (non-defense discretional spending) to 2008 levels through spending cuts.
• Pass a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution by capping government spending at 18 percent of GDP (gross domestic product).
• Reclaim the role of parents as decision-makers in their children’s education.

To learn more about his plan to revitalize the U.S. economy, visit www.ricksantorum.com.

Asked about the proposed fair tax, Santorium responded that he was not against it, but it would require a lot of steps for implementation. Before considering such a radical time-consuming change, he said, “we need to get this economy going again.”

Santorum was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990 and served in the U.S. Senate from 1995 to 2007.

As a senator, Santorum was a proponent of welfare reform, a supporter of a strong military, and an advocate for government fiscal responsibility. He also wrote and championed legislation that outlawed partial birth abortion and protected unborn infants.

Santorum and his wife of 21 years, Karen, are the parents of seven children.