Mitt Romney didn’t use a teleprompter when he introduced his 160-page jobs plan in Nevada on Tuesday.
“I don’t have a text written,” said Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and Republican candidate for president while holding up notes in what was clearly a dig at the teleprompter-loving President Obama. “You can actually see what I got here.”
That wasn’t the only contrast Romney made at McCandless International Trucks in Las Vegas between him and Obama, who is set to give a speech to a rare joint session of Congress this week detailing his own jobs plan. Romney criticized the president for waiting as long as he has “to offer a compelling vision for economic recovery.”
His plan includes more than 50 policy proposals on taxes, regulation, trade, energy, labor, human capital and fiscal policy.
“On my first day in office I will send five bills to Congress and issue five executive orders that will get government out of the way and restore America to the path of robust economic growth that we need to create jobs,” Romney told a cheering crowd.
One promised bill is the “Down Payment on Fiscal Sanity Act,” which calls for immediate 5 percent cuts to non-security discretionary spending, reducing the annual federal budget by $20 billion. Another is reducing the corporate income tax rate to 25 percent, from the 35 percent level it is at now.
Other legislation he promised to send to Congress includes implementing free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. He also promised to direct the Department of the Interior to undertake a comprehensive survey of American energy reserves. (RELATED: Boehner, Cantor call for common ground on Obama jobs plan)
Romney also called for legislation consolidating federal retraining programs, returning funding and responsibility for these programs to the states.
The Democratic National Committee pounced on Romney before he even gave his address, especially “Romney’s claim that he has the experience and ideas to create jobs.”
“In the private sector, Romney benefited by laying people off and shipping jobs overseas,” DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse wrote in a memo. “That sort of track record is not going to sit well with the Americans who are looking to find a job with a good wage and decent health care.”
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