CANDIDATE Q&A: U.S. House 6, Richard Clark (R)

Palm Coast Observer
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RICHARD CLARK

AGE: 42
FAMILY: Married 16 years, two children (12 and 11)
QUIRKY FACT: went to the same high school, college and church as Tim Tebow
BIO: In 2005, Clark led the charge against higher property taxes and has helped to bring more than 8,200 jobs to the First Coast, generating more than $966 million in private capital investment and growing employers such as PSS World Medical, Fidelity National Financial, Everbank, LPS, Embraer and J.P. Morgan Chase. Raised in St. Johns County and a graduate of Nease High School, Clark graduated from the University of Florida. He currently serves as president of Supreme Janitorial, a family-owned small business founded in 1968. Clark currently serves as the Florida chairman of the National Federation of Independent Business. He is a member of the Gator Bowl Committee and the boards of both River Garden Hebrew Home and JaxCare.

What would you do to balance the annual budget?

Well I think we do it the same way I’ve done it in the past. You know we did it in North Florida, and we knew everybody has to sacrifice. So you cut, you get rid of departments that are unnecessary, which we’ve also done. You level the tax playing field, get rid of all the loopholes. When GE pays zero in tax, there’s a problem. And as I’ve talked to the corporate world, they say “Look, if you can give me a number, 25%, whatever the number, I know that everybody’s paying the same amount and I have certainty in the world. I’ll start taking risks again, investing. I’ll start growing.” So that’s the only way you balance the budget: You sacrifice, you get rid of needless departments and bureaucracy that have grown over years and years ... and you simplify our tax code because what that will do is grow our base and grow revenue all at the same time. Putting more people to work will grow our revenue, so that’s how you do it. And you can do it. We owe it to Romney when he runs for re-election, that we present a balanced budget. And you don’t get there any other way other than sacrifice. You have to cut; you have to get rid of the fat and waste.

Everybody knows it’s there; no one can deny it. Government is the last place on the planet that’s got middle management; no one has middle management anymore. They have lots of layers of middle management. You got to get rid of it.

Would you be willing to pledge not to raise taxes?

Absolutely, I have several times. I think it’s unnecessary. I want to repeal the death tax entirely. I’m second generation in a janitorial company; I’ve got a hundred employees. There’s no way I can afford any kind of — the company goes away. There’s no way that we can transition that company from person to person. Anybody in the agriculture community, we’re talking thousands of acres, there’s no way for them to cover that tax burden. So you’ve got to find a way to get rid of it; it’s inherently unfair, and I think if we lower our tax base, if we get rid of the loopholes, we’ll wind up with better revenue, greater revenue, and people out there in the world growing again.

If you were asked to raise the national debt ceiling, how would you vote? What would you propose to reduce the national debt?

I would not support raising the debt ceiling. We held the line in North Florida, our budget up there; we did not increase the debt ceiling, and we paid back debt. So the first thing you have to do is get your financial house in order. We can’t take the next step of healing our economy and getting people working again unless we get our financial house in order. No business operates that way. You first make sure you’re financially sound, and then you start taking risks and growing. So that’s what we need to do. We need to get our financial house in order, and when you get your financial house in order, what you see in everybody’s plan is “OK, balanced budget, dates here.” And what they don’t show you is, “OK, how do we take that next step?” That next step is we have to start paying our debt down, not just balancing a budget.

We actually have to pay down our debt because it’s way too much burden for our future; our future generations can’t hang on with that big a debt load. If we don’t pay down our debt, we’ll never keep Social Security and Medicare and all those things solvent for those people that are already there, not the future generation but people who are there now. If you don’t strengthen and secure Social Security and Medicare, you’re in real trouble.

What should be done with the federal tax code? Where do you stand on the subject of a flat tax?

I am a big believer in tax simplification. The current Obama administration is literally trying to dictate behavior with the tax code, and it’s unacceptable. And they’re giving six-month loopholes. Nobody operates a business in six-month increments; six-year increments yes, six-month increments no. So you have to simplify our tax code, and the fair tax needs to get to the floor to debate it because no one’s debated it, no one’s had an up or down vote. The flat tax, I think we need a massive overhaul of our tax code. We need to all but eliminate the IRS. Yes, we have to have some revenue collection surface, and you have to collect it somehow, a treasury. But the way its functioning now is just unacceptable. So you’ve got to flatten our tax base, you’ve got to level the playing field, and you’ve got to get rid of all the loopholes. The problem is we’ve built so much corporate loophole structure and so many handouts that there are many companies that don’t pay any tax; we’re literally picking winners with our tax code. We’re deciding what entities are going to succeed, not the marketplace. And that’s not what our tax code is intended to do.

What are you willing to do to reform Medicaid and Medicare?

In the very short term we need to honor the commitment to those people currently in Medicaid and Medicare. And really our health care system in general, what we need is competition. I mean, look at Medicare Part D: It is fabulous. We’ve put a bunch of competition in there and prescription prices came down, not up. They came down because competition and free market principles work. Competition drives price down. People find more innovative ways to deliver their product. And that’s what we need in our health care system: We need a free market solution, we need not a mandate by any stretch, and we need to build those principles into all facets of our health care system so that we don’t have one “here’s how you have to do it” pick. Medicare will be solvent, and Medicaid for those people who need it, will be the same.