Mike Huckabee: South Carolina Needs Aggressive Broad Based Economic Renewal

Former AR Governor Has Five-Point Plan to Stimulate Economy for Working Families

Greenville, SC – The latest unemployment news from South Carolina shows how important “aggressive action is to a broad-based economic renewal,” Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee said today.

“President Bush’s plan will help, and it’s an important step. But South Carolina and the rest of the nation need some bigger changes if we are to reverse the trends of the last few years,” Governor Huckabee said today while campaigning through South Carolina in advance of tomorrow’s Republican presidential primary.

Last Monday, Governor Huckabee released his own five-point "Fair Deal" stimulus package aimed at creating jobs: 1) More income, better jobs, more secure home ownership for middle-class families, 2) work with the Federal Reserve for a pro-growth, low-inflation economy, 3) increase defense spending to 6 percent of Gross Domestic Product in response to real threats to America’s security, 4) invest in energy independence and 5) move toward a Fair Tax that eliminates the current distorted tax code.

The South Carolina unemployment rate jumped to 6.6 percent in December, up from 5.9 percent the previous month, according to the state Employment Security Commission. It was the largest one-month increase since at least 1990, state officials said.

One major problem, Huckabee said, is the current unfair tax code. “If we replace the IRS with the Fair Tax, we lift the burden off of the small- and medium-sized businesses who create most of the jobs. Then the only people who we then have to feel sorry for are the legions of Washington lobbyists who manipulate the current complicated code for somebody else,” Huckabee said.