John Kasich
Issues
Tax Reform
From Kasich’s “Economic Revival Factsheet”
Cut Taxes & Make The Tax Code Simpler & Fairer: Americans’ taxes are too high. They are a barrier to work, saving, growth and investment, and innovation and must be significantly reduced for individuals and businesses to spark growth.
- Cut Individuals’ Taxes: John Kasich will simplify and cut taxes for Americans by reducing the number of brackets from seven to three, cutting the top rate from the current 39.6 percent to 28 percent—the same rate President Reagan used in his 1986 tax cut—and cutting the other rates as well. Kasich also will increase the Earned Income Tax Credit by 10 percent, cut the long-term capital gains rate to 15 percent, eliminate the death tax and preserve the deductions for charitable donations and mortgage interest (consistent with current limits).
- Cut Business Taxes: John Kasich will cut the top rate from 35 percent to 25 percent to make America globally competitive, establish a low tax rate to repatriate the estimated $2 trillion in profits held overseas, double the research and development tax credit for businesses under $20 million, allow same-year expensing for new investments, and create a “territorial” system that only taxes U.S.-produced income, like most other major industrialized nations.
- Fix the IRS: Additionally, John Kasich will launch a top-to-bottom review of the IRS and tax code to root out the barriers to innovation and small business start-ups, as well as to end the IRS culture of bias, arrogance and political favoritism.
Health Policy
From “Kasich’s “Balance the Budget Factsheet”
Reform Entitlement Programs: The cost of entitlement programs like Medicaid and Medicare are growing uncontrollably and must be fundamentally reformed to reduce their growth rates and become more efficient while still providing the services that Americans want and need.
- Medicaid: Providing per-member per-month allocations to the states, along with the flexibility to innovate and tailor their programs to their individual health care markets, can help hold Medicaid’s spending growth to 3 percent annually.
- Medicare: Increasing care coordination through Medicare Advantage, as well as other changes like reforming payment practices to increase value and quality, can help restrain Medicare spending to an average of 5.3 percent annually.
- Social Security: Social Security’s fiscal health is deteriorating rapidly and it will soon be unable to meet its obligations to retirees. John Kasich’s balanced budget framework does not include changes to Social Security or its benefits to achieve balance, nor does it include the costs of filling Social Security’s deficits. As President he will lead a bipartisan Paid for by Kasich for America, www.johnkasich.com 2 effort to assemble the best ideas from the various reform plans that have been proposed to preserve its solvency. Most important, he will draw upon his experience as a reformer to bring people together and lead them to have the courage we need to save this important program for America’s seniors.
Drug Policy
Middle East
From Kasich’s “American Security Factsheet”
Defeat ISIS: Wiping ISIS off the map requires a complex, collaborative strategy involving mutual defense action by NATO—as well as regional allies—in the wake of the attack on France, intensifying international intelligence cooperation, increasing support to the highly-effective Kurdish military, creating safe havens and no-fly zones, combating human trafficking in refugees, a NATO & regional coalition with ground troops, and more aggressively fighting the war of ideas to discredit ISIS.
Trade
From Kasich’s “Economic Revival Factsheet”
Open New International Markets, but Get Smart About Unfair Trade: When American products and services are accessible around the world American businesses and workers benefit. Trade also enhances global security and stability. It can’t come at the cost of common sense, however. If other countries want access to the American market they should provide access to their markets, and trade violations must be quickly addressed to prevent significant economic damage to businesses and workers.
- The International Trade Commission and other U.S. trade bodies must be reformed to expedite consideration of complaints from companies that are negatively impacted by unfair trade practices.
- America must seek more favorable terms in trade negotiations including better protection against currency manipulation, intellectual property theft and cyber-attacks.
From Kasich’s “Dismantling Washington: the Commerce Department Factsheet”
Strengthen Trade Promotion & Expedite Trade Violation Enforcement: The Department’s International Trade Administration ineffectively brings together trade promotion, trade agreement enforcement, and data collection and analysis functions that are not natural fits.
- Expanding Markets for American Businesses and Workers: The trade promotion work of the Commercial Service and Global Markets division would function better in the State Department, especially since the overseas offices are usually located in embassies where they work closely with the State Department’s economic officers. Many of these functions would be augmented by coordination with U.S. Trade Representative.
- Enforcing Trade Agreements: Trade enforcement and compliance work, as well as industry analysis functions, are better suited at the International Trade Commission, an independent agency that already responds to trade violations. Aligning these functions more directly will help speed up responses to trade violations to better protect American workers.
- Improve Protection of Sensitive Technology: The Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security regulates exports of sensitive technologies to prevent them from being used against America by unfriendly nations or terror groups. Combining these national security and international engagement function is better suited at the State Department, which already coordinates closely with the Bureau on its work.
Immigration
Environmental
Entrepreneurship/Small Business
From Kasich’s “Dismantling Washington: the Commerce Department Factsheet”
Link Basic and Applied Science to Put New Ideas to Work and to Create Jobs: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a powerhouse of scientific know-how, with strong industry relationships via its standards-setting work. Additionally, the National Technical Information Services (NTIS) collects and disseminates scientific and technical information from government-funded research to expand knowledge. To help get new ideas out of the lab and into the marketplace—a longtime priority of Gov. Kasich—he would merge NIST and NTIS with the basic science research functions of the National Science Foundation. This new combined science center would create a well-aligned pipeline from basic research, through applied research and into industry, while also providing a robust platform for disseminating new breakthroughs. NIST’s programs in support of manufacturers would be separated and merged with the Small Business Administration to provide these job creators a more seamless one-stop experience for the support they need.
