GLENN: Gosh, I think it was a year and a half ago I said, gang, the only thing that’s going to matter when this election rolls around is the economy. I know everybody thought I was absolutely out of my mind crazy nuts when I said we are in big trouble and we could be facing another Great Depression. I don’t know what we’re facing now but we are facing dire, dire things in front of us. Every play has to be played exactly right. You know, when I say that, I want you to know that it’s going to be a great time in the future to be an American just like it was on September 12th. September 11th you didn’t want to go through, and in ‘99 I was telling you Osama Bin Laden was coming and there would be bodies in buildings in the streets of New York in 1999 and nobody wanted to hear it then, and there were. And let me give you the same kind of warning there’s going to be real trouble ahead, but the next day comes and we’re America again. And I said this to you a year and a half ago that the only thing that they were going to be arguing about in the end is going to be the economy and that’s why I said Mitt Romney was the guy to lead us. He was just with John McCain in Cleveland. We go to Mitt Romney now and I want to get some handle, Mitt, on have you ever seen a candidate like Barack Obama be more clear that he is a Marxist and people not listen.
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Rally, Glenn, it’s interesting. I haven’t been around forever and I’m 60 now and in my lifetime I do not recall a presidential candidate who had a more antijob program than does Barack Obama. He plans on paying people off by giving them a check, you know, sending a check to everybody, a $1,000 check. But I think the American people would far rather have a job than a one-time $1,000 check. And his plan kills job. John McCain’s plan will actually create jobs. Barack Obama’s would take a recession and turn it into a deep prolonged recession, or worse. And, you know, I just think Barack Obama at this time is exactly the wrong course for America.
GLENN: Did you hear the — did you hear what he said in 2001? Finally the tape has been released and surprisingly not by the mainstream media, what Barack Obama has said about the Constitution? Have you read the transcripts or heard the tape?
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Yeah, I did. I heard that he again is, you know, sad that the Supreme Court wouldn’t deal with redistribution of wealth and it’s a very different economic approach than the one that’s created America as the most powerful economy and the most powerful country in the world. You know, right now, of course, no one’s thinking about redistributing the wealth because wealth is disappearing, and redistributing wealth, that was the policy that, well, that some in Europe and other places in the world adopted and it led to economic failure.
GLENN: Okay. He is saying that he’s got — Barack Obama’s saying that he’s got this jobs creation program. As a businessman, I mean, I’m a small businessman. You’ve been a large businessman your whole life. Tell me the frothing at the mouth that people, just chomping at the bit to get that $3,000 that Barack Obama will give you for every new job created here in America. That’s his job growth plan. Tell me how great that is for business.
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Well, I’m afraid that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the economic risk you take in hiring additional employees, and people take that risk if they see a bright future. And if they’re looking at higher taxes for their corporation, higher taxes for them individually, if they’re looking at fees or penalties for not having a healthcare plan that Barack Obama finds acceptable and if also they are looking at new efforts to unionize small business through this card check program Barack Obama’s in favor of, they’re simply not going to be thinking about growing jobs here. I listened this morning to a CEO of a major employer. I won’t mention his name but a very large employer. He employs over 100,000 people. And he said, look, you know, Barack Obama’s policies will cause us to build plants in places other than the U.S., and it is a job-killing program. We’ve got to support a job program like John McCain’s. John McCain is talking about cutting taxes on corporations, it immediately sounds horrible to people because of the perversion that we’ve allowed to happen, you know, with our press and everything else, where corporations are evil, where rich people are evil. Explain, if you will, to you know the average person that is struggling, busting their butt. Why a corporation getting a giant tax cut, why that makes a difference in creating jobs here in America as opposed to other countries.
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Well, the simple fact is that corporations can decide where they are going to reside, where they are going to do their business. And they can be here, they can be in Ireland, they can be in Canada, they can be anywhere they want in the world and right now America and Japan have the two highest corporate tax rates in the world and so as businesses think about locating a new facility or even moving their corporate headquarters, they are free to go wherever they want. They are not like U.S. citizens that don’t have citizenship in a place like Hong Kong or China or Japan. They can go wherever they want. And so if you have high taxes, high corporate taxes, you cause businesses to go somewhere else. It’s as simple as that. In Ireland, for instance, the European Union, they said, you know what, we’re going to have the lowest tax rates. And sure enough businesses flocked to Ireland. They created scores of new jobs. People had high paying jobs. It was good for the people and it was good for the government as well because they got taxes from all the people paying income taxes. The answer is always create growth, create jobs. A job is so much more of an economic benefit than is a check from government.
GLENN: Mitt, let me talk to you not about politics and no about either of the politicians. Let’s just say we’re having this conversation the day after and whoever’s won, whoever won, okay?
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Yeah.
GLENN: I said earlier this morning I believe this is the most important — and I will say this the day after the election, no matter who won. This is the most important time possibly in American history. The problems that face us, the decisions that we have to make, the time to know who we truly are and what we truly believe in, the values of America, we must reconnect with them because this is quite possibly the most important time in our country’s history. Do you believe I’m overstating that?
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: No, I actually think you’re right, Glenn. You know, in my campaign stump speech I used to say almost that, which is this is an extraordinarily critical time for our country. We face challenges from without. We face a new stronger China, we face Russia using energy to propel their new power and we face global jihad. So we face three fronts, if you will, from a national security standpoint. And then our economy is facing some tough competitive challenges. And if we become a second tier nation economically, we will have a hard time defending our freedoms. This really is a “Make it or break it” time for America.
GLENN: I know we have to let you go, you have other things scheduled but we’d love to have you back sometime this week if we could. I’d like to talk to you a little bit about the importance that Russia and Venezuela and Iran and what — everybody is looking at oil saying, oil, this is great, it’s going down. They are talking now it could go down to $46 a barrel, which would be great at the pump, but it is a colossal danger because these countries that we depend on for oil are now becoming extraordinarily unstable economically. Could we spend some time with you maybe later this week if we can get the schedules together?
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: I’m out campaigning for John McCain but we’ll keep in touch.
GLENN: Okay, thank you very much.
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Thanks, Glenn.
