Fed Has Run Out of ‘Ritalin’: Huntsman
It’s time to start talking about real fiscal policies and stop relying on the Federal Reserve to fix the country's problems, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman said Thursday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
“The Fed has become increasingly this repair shop for broken fiscal policy,” Huntsman said. “At some point you’ve got to say they can’t do anything more. There’s no Ritalin in the medicine cabinet.”
Huntsman, who sought the 2012 GOP presidential candidacy, said leaders need to start addressing the country’s fiscal issues instead of relying on monetary policy.
“We're right to this critically important time in our economic history,” he said. “You can't devalue your way to prosperity. You can't bash your currency and expect your great export industries to succeed longer term because everyone's going to follow suit.”
(Read More:Still Fiddling While the 'Fiscal Cliff' Gets Closer: Bartiromo.)
For Huntsman, growth is key to getting the country’s fiscal house in order. “We need to look at growth as being the primary discussion that the Republican Party ought to be having now about solving our problems,” he said.
A big part of that is tax reform. “I want to broaden the base and lower the rate,” Huntsman said. That means phasing out deductions like the health care deduction, the home interest mortgage deduction and the charitable deduction over time.
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The same thing needs to happen on the business side. “All the subsidies and corporate welfare needs to be flushed out of the system,” he said.