News Roundup: Bush tax cuts, other tax cut plans, and speaking in Georgia's 9th district

-- From Sentinel Source (NH): “If we do our job right in 2012, we can say the era of big government is over and mean it,” Gingrich said.

-- The Boston Globe writes:

Getting people off unemployment, welfare, and Medicaid rolls and into the work force is the best way to balance the federal budget, Gingrich told students at Saint Anselm College in Manchester during the first of three scheduled stops in New Hampshire.

The possible Republican presidential candidate said the goal should be to get the unemployment rate down from levels as high as 11 1/2 percent to 4 percent, which he said was the rate when he led the House in the 1990s.

"That shift of 7 1/2 percent [for people] who are depending on the government [into] being taxpayers is the single biggest step you can take back toward balancing the budget," he said.

Gingrich called for reducing to zero the capital gains tax, making permanent the George W. Bush-era tax cuts, allowing companies to write off 100 percent of new equipment purchases in the first year, and eliminating the estate tax.

He also called for a 12.5 percent corporate tax rate, saying a reasonable tax rate would stop such companies as General Electric from sheltering profits to avoid paying federal taxes.

Gingrich said jobs began to be added after President Obama extended the Bush tax cuts but businesses would remain leery of adding jobs because those tax cuts are set to expire in 2013.

"It’s not bad luck that we have high unemployment; it’s bad policies," he said.

Gingrich said that he expected to open a campaign office soon in Georgia and that if he decides to run for president, he probably will announce it next month.

-- Newt will be the first speaker in the "live free or die speaker series," which is being put on by the New Hampshire Republican Committee:

“New Hampshire is poised to deliver the Republican nominee for president," New Hampshire Republican Party Chairman Jack Kimball said Wednesday in a statement. "This is why it is so imperative to bring together those with strong ideologies who have a vision to create solutions to defeat the radical Obama agenda."

-- Newt will speak at the convention of the 9th District Georgia Republicans.