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WASHINGTON — Republican presidential contenders turned up the heat on former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain and his 9-9-9 tax plan at a televised debate last night, ganging up on the surging candidate who has vaulted from obscurity to near the top of the polls.
“It’s a catchy phrase. In fact I thought it was the price of a pizza,” quipped former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman last night at the Washington Post/Bloomberg News debate at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH.
Cain shot back that “9-9-9 will pass, and is not the price of a pizza. It starts with, unlike your proposals, throwing out the current tax code.”
Rep. Michele Bachmann even seemed to compare Cain’s plan to a symbol of the antichrist.
“When you take the 9-9-9 plan and turn it upside down, the devil’s in the details,” she said. “Once you get another revenue stream, you’re never going to get rid of it.”
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said Cain’s plan “could not pass,” but Cain said it would if he were in charge.
Cain’s plan would wipe out the complex federal system of taxation with a flat personal income tax, a corporate tax and a national sales tax each set at 9 percent.
When pressed on a Bloomberg analysis that it wouldn’t raise as much cash as the current system, Cain responded, “The problem with that analysis is that it is incorrect.” He cited “dynamic scoring” and his own private analysis, saying “our numbers will make it revenue-neutral.”
But the numbers that really caught the GOP’s attention have been Cain’s position in the polls: pulling to first or second place in South Carolina, Iowa and New Hampshire and in national surveys.
Former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney kept his focus on President Obama and his own economic plan, but also defended the 2008 taxpayer-funded bailouts that helped spark the Tea Party movement.
“We were on the precipice and we could’ve had a complete meltdown of the entire financial system,” he said. “Action had to be taken. Was it perfect? No. Was it well implemented? Not particularly.”
Texas Gov. Rick Perry hoped to recover from a halting performance at a similar forum that started his poll numbers sliding.
But he was mostly on the sidelines, and missed chances to swipe at Romney.