Rick Santorum: Campaign Issues

Where he stands

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Healthcare

• If elected President, Santorum vows to repeal Obama's healthcare law and replace it with patient-centered healthcare.
• Santorum believes every American should have access to high-quality, affordable health care, but that decisions should be made by patients and their physicians, not the government.
• He plans to strengthen patient-driven health coverage options like Health Savings Accounts and high deductible insurance plans as well as reduce medical costs through competition and the use of electronic records. He wants to promote health care literacy to empower patients and their doctors with information and options.
• He wants to allow people to purchase their own health care coverage with pre-tax dollars.

Budget/Deficit/Taxes

• If elected, Santorum pledges to cut $5 trillion in federal spending over 5 years.
• He plans to freeze spending for 5 years on defense as well as on social programs like Medicaid, Housing, Education, Job Training, and Food Stamps.
• He wants to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, which would cap government spending at 18% of GDP. This would force the President and Congress to balance the budget like Governors do.
• Santorum believes in a return to the Reagan era pro-growth tax rate. He wants to simplify personal income taxes by cutting the number of tax rates to just two, 10% and 28%.
• He plans to simplify the tax code, reduce overall taxes by eliminating the Estate Tax, and cut middle income taxes by eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax.
• He wants to reduce taxes for families by tripling the personal deduction for each child and by eliminating marriage tax penalties.
• He has pledged to cut the corporate income tax rate in half, from 33.5% to 17.5%.

Immigration

• Santorum supports a fence along the southern U.S. border. As a senator, he voted yes on the Secure Fence Act. In the Sept. 12, 2011 CNN Republican debate, he said, "I believe that we need to secure the border using technology and more personnel."
• Also while senator, Santorum voted no on the following: allowing illegal immigrants to participate in Social Security, giving benefits to illegal immigrants, and giving guest workers paths to citizenship. He also opposed the Dream Act, which would have provided a way for children of illegal immigrants to gain conditional permanent residency.
• He favors making English the official language of the United States.

Energy/Environment

• Santorum pledges to cut Environment Protection Agency resources because their regulations have killed jobs. He wants to return the focus to common sense conservation.
• He favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and scaling back regulations which hinder drilling elsewhere.
• He plans to eliminate energy subsidies in four years.

Foreign Policy

• Santorum has stated that if Iran does not cooperate with the U.S. and meet his requests, he would authorize airstrikes on their nuclear facilities.
• He pledges to work with Israel to eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat immediately, taking military action if needed. He also plans to increase pressure on Hezbollah and Syrian, and to eliminate the post of U.S. Ambassador to Syria.
• Santorum voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act.
• He supports airport screeners employing profiling, the continued use of Guantanamo Bay for suspected terrorists as well as waterboarding, which he says has proved effective.
• He believes the U.S. needs to change its information operations abroad to promote the nation's core values of freedom, equality, and democracy.

Same-sex marriage

• Santorum supports a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, not leaving the decision to states. He believes that marriage cannot be defined differently from one state to another. As a senator, he was a strong supporter of the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2004.