Mike Huckabee (Jobs and Business Policy)

Huckabee's Jobs and Business Policy (section page)

Corporations

Stop punishing manufacturing; stop punishing work[1]

"We'd get rid of taxes on people's work, so, we wouldn't punish people for working anymore. We've lost five million manufacturing jobs since 2000. The jobs are in Mexico, they're in China, they're in Indonesia. Bring the jobs back. And with the FairTax, you do that, because you don't tax capital and labor. And here's the best part. We don't reduce the IRS, we get rid of the IRS." (RD4)

Wall Street executives should have gone to jail in 2008

"Q: You have railed against income inequality. You've said that some Wall Street executives should have gone to jail over the roles that they played during the financial crisis. Are there specific steps you would require from corporate America to try and reduce the income inequality.

HUCKABEE: Look, corporations ought to exercise some responsibility. When CEO income has risen 90% above the average worker, when the bottom 90% of this country's economy has had stagnant wages for the past 40 years, somebody is taking it in the teeth. And it's not the folks on Wall Street. I'm not anti-Wall Street, but I don't believe the government ought to wear a team jersey, pick winners and losers. The government ought to wear a striped shirt and just make sure the game is played fairly."(RD3)

Fight the Wall-Street-to-Washington axis of power

"Q: Decade after decade, there are promises from Republicans to shrink government. But it gets bigger, even under Republican politicians. So is the government simply too big to shrink?

HUCKABEE: It's not too big to shrink. But the problem is we have a Wall Street-to-Washington axis of power that has controlled the political climate. The donor class feeds the political class who does the dance that the donor class wants. And the result is federal government keeps getting bigger. Every person on this stage who has been a governor will tell that you the biggest fight they had was not the other party. Wasn't even the legislature. It was the federal government, who continually put mandates on the states that we had to suck up and pay for. There are a lot of things happening at the federal level that are absolutely beyond the jurisdiction of the Constitution. This is power that should be shifted back to the states, whether it's the EPA or the Department of Education."(RD1)

Jobs

Wages for bottom 90% of the economy stagnant for 40 years[2]

"The Fed is in trouble because they haven't addressed the number one issue that's hurting Americans and that's that wages for the bottom 90 percent of the economy have been stagnant for 40 years. In the 25 years after World War II, wages grew by 85 percent. People were moving up. That's not happening any more, and in large measure, the Fed has manipulated the dollar so it doesn't have a standard. Tie the dollar to something fixed and if it's not going to be gold, make it the commodity basket."(RD4)