GLENN BECK PROGRAM
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GLENN: 888-727-BECK. 888-727-BECK. It is Closed Line Friday and joining us now on the phone is Governor Mitt Romney. Hello, Mitt, how are you, sir?

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: I'm terrific, Glenn. Thank you.

GLENN: So good to talk to you again. It's been -- it's been a crazy couple of weeks trying to figure America out and figure our politicians out.

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: They're getting smoked out, though, Glenn. You are seeing comments from Hillary Clinton about a new, "We're all in it together" society and Barack Obama talking about what he's going to do in his first year. You're beginning to see the liberals for who they really are.

GLENN: But they are not even liberals. She took offense to be called a liberal on the debate on Monday. She said she is a progressive and if anybody wants to spend the time and look up a progressive in history of progressives in the early 20th century which she clearly said she was, early 20th century progressive, these people, this is socialism. This is spooky, spooky stuff.

GOP Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Well, she did say that she thinks we should end the society that's a "On your own" society and replace it with a "We're in it together" society, with shared responsibility, and that is -- that could come out of the writings of Karl Marx. It's certainly not going to come out of the writings of Adam Smith. And Adam Smith and his philosophy has driven the economic vitality in an extraordinary way and the approach she suggested has been a failure in Europe. That's why Europe is turning the other direction.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh. I want to ask you, why are we not calling for a flat tax? You've got Macedonia, you've got Czechoslovakia, you've got all of these old other than block countries that lived under that socialist nightmare that are now -- I think it was Macedonia just went to a 9% flat tax for income and corporate. We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world right now. How are we expecting to survive and why aren't we going for a flat tax?

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Well, you know, you raise a very good point. You'll find it interesting. I just read Bill Bradley's book to see what he was saying and he pointed out in his book that corporations can move anywhere they want in the world now. There's no requirement that a corporation is locked in our soil, and we have the highest corporate tax rates of any industrialized nation in the world. And what that means is we will see corporations and jobs leave here unless we bring our taxes down, and Democrats like John Edwards and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over the last few days are calling for tax increases and Hillary called for an increase in the corporate tax rate. This -- I mean, that's always their answer when their challenge is they turn to government.

GLENN: So you didn't really answer question. Why don't we have a candidate calling for a flat tax?

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Well, you know, it's -- it has a lot of features that are attractive but the flat tax as it was originally proposed by Steve Forbes had some things I think that would not work and one that I pointed out, of course, is that you eliminate the home mortgage deduction and that would have an impact on the housing market. Another is that the very, very wealthy would pay no taxes at all, none, under a flat tax. And so I think as people hear the term "Flat tax," they like the idea but then if they hear that some people will pay no taxes at all, the very wealthiest, they've say, ooh, there's got to be something to adjust it.

GLENN: Hey, hey, wait. You're talking about the very wealthy. You were talking quite honestly about people like Hillary Clinton that have millions and millions and millions that are working for them and they are not -- they are not paying in income tax. You're saying that they wouldn't pay anything on capital gains.

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Yeah, that's right, under the Forbes flat tax plan, someone like Bill Gates who probably gets in a billion dollars of income a year from interest and dividends and capital gains, he probably pays $200 million in taxes a year. He would pay no taxes under the flat tax, and I don't think that's what people think about when they think about flat tax. So there's some --

GLENN: So why don't you -- why don't you fix those problems and introduce a flatter tax?

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Yeah. And that's one of the things that I'll be talking about is my own tax policy. One of the elements that I've already put forward is that I would like to reduce taxes across the board. I'd also like to go after savings for people of middle incomes, and my view is middle income Americans ought to be able to save their money and get their interest dividends and capital gains tax-free. I don't think we should tax people when they earn their money and then when they save it and then when they die. So I want to take that tax off on capital gains, interest and dividends for middle income Americans.

GLENN: Okay. So wait a minute. Hang on just a sec. It's not right for Bill Gates but it's right for middle Americans. Mitt, I know you well enough. I know your history well enough to know that you understand our founding fathers. Help solve something in my head that has been bothering me here recently. Why can't I sue for my equal rights as someone who has prospered in this country? I was born poor, I made my money, and I do not have equal rights under this system because you're penalizing me and you just made an example. You want to make sure that somebody who is middle class has rights that I don't.

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: No, I really don't, Glenn.

GLENN: But I mean, help me out. How does that not work that way?

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Well, obviously we have a whole series of provisions of the tax code that give advantage to people of lower income. Do you realize the bottom 30% of earners in this country pay no income tax at all, the bottom 30%. And then in addition, we give a child credit for every child so a person gets a $1,000 tax credit for every child they have. So that means the people who have children are getting advantages relative to people who don't. Those are the provisions that have been worked into the code over the years. Of course, in the Bush tax cut plan we put in place that we doubled the child tags credit. So there are dramatic differences in how we treat different types of income and different types of families, and I'll give you that. There are dramatic differences. But even the flat tax plan, it wouldn't charge any tax to people of lower income. They got no tax at all and no tax for the people of very high income.

GLENN: Right.

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: And that's -- I think that has some problems associated with it.

GLENN: Well, I will tell you this. We do agree on one thing and that is that the agenda that is coming out of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is truly, truly frightening and should raise, should raise the hair on everybody's, the back of their neck because I've never heard anybody so bold.

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Well, you know, one of the things that struck me, and perhaps the biggest shock in the last few weeks was watching the Democratic debate excerpts that I saw and to have Barack Obama say that in his first year he's going to be meeting with Ahmadinejad and Castro and others of like background and bestowing the honor and dignity of the United States presidency and meeting with them is extraordinary. And then I watched him yesterday defending that by saying he wants to break policies with the Cheney/Bush presidency. Hey, he would be breaking the policies of all modern presidents. John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Clinton. They didn't meet with Castro or Ahmadinejad. The guy is completely in a different sphere.

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