[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> our "road to the white house" coverage continues to republican presidential candidate newt gingrich in

waterloo, iowa. he held a meet and greet with supporters in iowa. this is a little over an hour. >> morning. thank you so much. how are you? love the hat! >> nice to see you, newt. >> hey, how are you?

>> how you feeling? >> you feel great. >> oh, boy, here we go. another lutheran graduate? >> yes, i am. >> here you go. how are you? a rather bigger institution.

>> how are you? good to see you. good to see you. how are you? this is amazing, isn't it? >> we get them all set up for you. >> hi. how are you? >> how are you, sir? >> wow, you sure did, didn't you? how are you? >> very good. >> thank you. [applause] >> hello. how are you? good to see you.

>> i look for you on national tv. >> nice to see you. thank you for coming. >> good to see you all. hello. hello. >> nice to see you. >> well, ok. is this working? >> a little bit. >> it works in the other room? is that it in so the other room can hear me? but this room can't hear me? >> yes, we can. >> ok the let me say first of all what a great, great turnout. thank you very, very much for coming out this evening. this has been a very, very exciting caucus. i'm looking forward very much

to tuesday night. i thought -- thought the most interesting thing in the dezmonies register poll was that -- des moines register poll was that 41% of the voters indicated they might actually change their vote between now and tuesday night. so i'm here in part to ask you to show up for me tuesday night, but also to make a couple of arguments that i think are very, very important. i want to start with the whole nature of the campaign this year. as you know, i said from the very beginning we would run a positive campaign, we would run -- talk about positive ideas, and we would offer positive solutions. some of my opponents have taken a very different tack, in part because i think they couldn't defend their records. something like 45% of all the ads this year have been attacks on me. iowa has a chance to really

change american politics. business as usual would be for the negative ads to work, but if iowans decide not to vote for the people who ran negative ads you would literally change the whole nature of american politics by punishing people who rely on negative attacks. so when you get there with your friends, remind them they have candidates who have been positive and negative and it would be pretty good for the country for the candidates who did the negative ads to learn that it doesn't pay in america to spend all your time and money on that. second, we are in real trouble in this country. when you watch a washington so ineconomy -- incompetent that passing a two-month tax cut exhausts the congressional and the president and they go home thinking they've accomplished

something, you know something is fundamentally wrong. one of the major chois in this campaign is between managing the decay and changing washington. i am the only candidate in this race who has a track record of twice helping change washington, once as a very young member working with ronald reagan where we turned around the economy and we -- defeated the soviet empire and the second time as a speaker where we balanced the budget, cut taxed and did all that with a liberal democrat in the white house. so remind your friends that if they, if all they want to do is manage the decay, there are candidates capable of that but if they want to turn the country around, there is only one candidate this year with a track record of actually doing it. finally, if you look at the whole process of getting the economy growing again, as all of you know i've been speaking all week about jobs and economic growth. we were very honored to have

art laffer, one of the original economists who worked with ronald reagan, come to iowa to endorse me and to say my plan was much better for economics and jobs and i just got a call a few moments ago from -- saying that the wall street editorial board said my plan was the only plan with growth built into it. so for all those who worry about the economy, i think what we've been doing is a -- is dramatically better. this is a little more complicated environment than i expected, frankly. on our schedule it said there would be 50 people here. [laughter] >> i know, you've really disappointed the schedulers. but i thought for a minute or two, i'd like to take questions from the iowans, not the news media. but i'd love to take some

questions from you all since you were so kind as to come out on a sunday. yes, sir? >> what would you do to move jobs back to the united states that have been shipped to china? >> what would i do to move jobs back that have gone overseas? that why we have a very aggressive tax and regulatory policy. on tax i would go to zero to bring hundreds of billions into the u.s. and create new jobs. i would go to 100% expensing so everything you bought you could write off in one year, to make our work force the most productive in the world and i would change unemployment compensation so that in order to get it you are -- had to sign up for a business training program so you were actually improving your skills. we would no longer give people

money for 99 weeks for doing nothing. that would dramatically improve our work force. [applause] i also proposed a 12.5% corporate tax rate, even lower than canada and the irish tax rate. that would bring in monies that are locked up in businesses overseas. i would las bollish obama care. [applause] >> i would abolish the dodd-frank bill, which is killing small banks and small businesses. i would repeal sarbanes-oxley, which is a bill that's added a tremendous amount of paperwork for no particular advantage. i would replace the current environmental protection agency for a brand-new environmental solutions agency that had to apply common sense and economic rationality to its decisions and i would modernize the food

and drug administration. on energy, i am deeply committed to an american energy program. if you watch what's happening in the middle east, we are very foolish not to have an american energy program. calista and i were at the reagan library for president reagan's 100th birthday and we had lunch with former secretary of -- secretary of state george schulz who said how many times do you have to get hit over the head by a two by four to recognize you need to get the energy situation fixes? -- fixed? that's why we want american coal and oil and garks american nuclear power, america -- american wind power. iowa ranks second only to denmark in wind power. and you may remember in 1994 i voted for something called gasohol which reagan signed as part of our national security

energy program. in 1986 it had been renamed ethanol and i signed it again. in 1299 -- 1998 when big oil tried to kill it, chuck grassley said i was the one person who saved ethanol from being killed by big oil esm the reason is simple. if i have to choose between paying $1 billion to iran or to iowa, i will pick iowa every time. [applause] and if i have to choose between paying $1 billion to sawed -- saudi arabia or south dakota, i'll pick south dakota every time. so that's how i would start the economy going again. yes, ma'am? >> a president doesn't do things by himself. we don't elect just a president, but a presidential team. can you give us some examples of who would be on your team in >> the question was about presidents don't do things just by themselves, they also have a

team. it's deeper than that. we need to run you a -- a republican team campaign next fall because we need to pick up the senate by a big margin and gain seats in the house and do so with an agenda so people going into office in january 2013, that the american people expect them to actually get things done, not just sit around and bicker. so there is a legislative team you have to assemble as well as the presidential team. i helped do that in 1980 with reagan and obviously in 1984 with the contract with america. in terms of the cabinet, i've said to people, and these are not, i'm not offering jobs and nobody has to agree or turn me down right now, but i said i would want very strong personnel who are also prepared to be engaged in very large amounts of change. you want people prepared to take on the washington bureaucracy and the washington interest groups. somebody like john bolton, for

example, for secretary of state, he would be strong enough he would have an impact on the state department. . someone like steve forbes as a possibility at treasury, he would certainly have that kind of capability. someone like a lew lemon at the federal reserve. a number of people of that caliber you would want to look at. i don't know if he would take it, but if you thought about somebody like mitch daniel for health and human services, he certainly knows enough he would be the right kind of person. yes, sixers -- sir? yes? >> [inaudible question] and senate gridlock? it just seems to be killing us. you hate the -- >> the you hate the congress gridlock and let me tell you, if you don't have a president who is willing to get the job done, it is very hard to avoid

gridlock. i worked with reagan when tip o'neil was speaker and we found we had to to get one out of every three democrats to vote with us in order to pass the reagan program, and we did. when i became speaker i realized if i couldn't get bill clinton's signature we could posture all year but we wouldn't get anything done so he and i worked endlessly and we passed balanced budgets, passed the first tax cut in 16 years. it took a tremendous amount of reaching -- you have to think about the country more than you think about your party or your own position if you're going to get this kind of stuff done. that's part of what i think my unique value is. i've actually been involved in doing this twice. nobody else in this race has successfully been involved in the scale of change i was involved in in those two

cycles. yes, ma'am? >> this is not a national thing, but the united states postal service, have you thought about not paying down the -- >> hold on. let me finish with the lady up here and then i'll come back there. ? the postal service is contingent to the united states mail. not paying down the retirement, prepaying down for people that aren't even employed yet and keeping the postal service -- like here they're talking about closing down the service here. is there anything you can do to keep the postal service viable? because there's a lot of people that don't have internet and that can -- that depend on the postal service. >> my recommendation, which will probably not be received happily by the postal union is that they renegotiate the contracts from the ground up. you've got 9.5% unemployment.

you have to ask yourself the question, what do you think you could hire the next postal worker for given a fair market? >> how about prepaying the retirement for people that aren't even hired yet? >> well, that's the sort of thing congress could waive and should be waived. but i'm also saying the underlying cost structure of the postal service has to be dealt with directly. it is too expensive a structure now. the lady way in the back wanted to say something the go ahead. >> yes, sir. they say that the -- that the -- that the money the federal reserve is paying -- how do you propose to build that up? >> i don't think the money in the federal reserve is too low. i think the federal reserve system has been run too secretly. we need an audit of the federal reserve. re -- we need an annual audit,

frankly and we need all the decision documents of 2008, it 0 shall -- 2009, 2010 so we can find out who they've been giving money to and why. the congress, which is supposed to be representative of the people, has been spending less money than the federal reserve, and the federal reserve spends all of it in secret and i think that's wrong in a free society. we need a full overhaul to bring it back under control and preferably without chairman bernanke being there. yes, sir? >> ok. i'm not a conservative. but i have quite a few conservative people at my group. friday i was trying to ask the question of rick perry. he walked away from me. he will definitely lose my

vote. ok? i want to ask about the united nations. rick perry says we should defund it. do you agree with that or would you work with others to reform the united nations so it could become more efficient and more effective? >> well, i would dramatically reform and overhaul the united nations and i would be very aggressive about taking on the corruption in the united nations. i co-chaired a reform task force with former democratic senate majority leader george mitchell -- mitchell several years ago and the u.n. is a mess and all too often it's general assembly is dominated by an anti-american majority and i would work hard to turn that around. i would also be prepared to start building an alternative this -- and bringing in the other democracies instead of being surrounded by dictatorships. but i wouldn't just walk off

from it. >> what is your biggest weakness? >> what do i think is my biggest weakness? [laughter] >> trying to do too much? >> probably that i'm too reasonable and i should have sponleded to the negative ads two weeks earlier. yes, ma'am in >> can you explain why you did the commercial with miss pelosi and what changed? you say it's one of your biggest mistakes. what changed because of it? >> there are two parts to this. i was just looking at the commercial which fox is playing once again without explaining it. the question i was trying to reach was can conservatives be in the middle of an environmental debate and represent a conservative solution to the environment? because i taught environmental

studies. i think the environment does matter and i think conservatives ought to be pro-environment in the broad sense that all of us want to have clean air and clean water and we want to have national parks and diversity of species and i don't think -- i don't think we should walk off and allow liberals to be the only people who care about the environment. that was the reason i agreed to do the commercial. it was stupid to do it because nancy pelosi became so radio to do -- radioactive that the act of being not a couch with her -- >> ew! >> exactly. i rest my case. i've been very energetic my whole career, and every once in a while i do something dumb and i will concede that was dumb. but the ad goes on to say something that's factually false. this is why i think i've been too passive, not in not going negative but in not going after

things that are just plain false. when al gore testified on cap and trade in the house, i was the next witness and i testified against it. the entire videotape of my testimony is available at newt.org the it is just a lie to suggest that i tried to pass trap -- cap and trade. nick can take a shot at me for being dumb enough to be on a couch next to pelosi. that's a clean, fair shot. i concede it up front. sometimes people make mistakes. but it is totally wrong to suggest that i wanted the federal government to run all the cars in the united states through the e.p.a. that is a blatant falsehood, romney's people know it's false, and that's what frankly makes me really angry. one or two more? yes, sir? >> i'm with the national guard, deployed to iraq 16 months. afghanistan a year.

just got back this summer. what about iraq and afghanistan? what is your stance on the future for that in? well, let me sea first of all in addition to saying thank you to the national guard -- [applause] my dad spent 27 years in the army in the infantry and i worry when our military gets small enough that we are rotating national guards units in because it makes me wonder what are our reserve forces? the original idea was the guard was part pve our reserve we would mobilize in a real crisis. if they now become part of the regular operational army, we have no reserves and that's a real danger to the habit we've gotten into in the last eight or 10 years. second, i think the odds are very high that we are in the process of losing iraq. i think the iran yangians --

iranians are on offense and the fact is when prime minister malaki visited the white house recently he had a brigade xander of the iranian revolutionary guard in his entourage, a man who we believe was responsible for killing americans. the fact that the obama administration either didn't know it or didn't care about it gives you some sense of how bad this is. in afghanistan we have always had two core problems that we have never dealt with. the first is that the pashtun live equally in pakistan and in southern afghanistan and they ethnically don't recognize the border. so if you concede pakistan as a sanctuary, you will never win the war. and we've known this -- every guerrilla war in history, if the guerrillas have a sanctuary, they will always out last the regular forces. that's part one. part two, the leveling of --

level of change we want in afghanistan is nonmilitary. it's building 50,000 miles of road, legislate fiing the community, giving kids cell phones, finding ways to break down the isolation of a medieval society. we've never been prepared outside the military -- i gave a speech on this in spring 2002 in which i took own -- on the state department and said flatly that we are incompetent in our overseas efforts outside the military and we are not capable of delivering the things we propose to do as -- and that's proven to be true in the middle east the past nine years. it's going to get worse, not better. yes, sir? >> [inaudible] >> yes is about the chinese ban -- plan to go to the moon while we're hitchhiking to go into outer space. there is no better example of

the tragic failure of broosesi -- bureaucracy than nasa. here's a country whose president said in 1982 we will -- or 1962, we will get to the moon before the end of the decade and we did. and it was an extraordinarily daring step. at the time he made that speech the total american time in space was three hours sub orbital. we had never orbited with a person and he's standing there saying we're going to be on ought moon. we than he loud bureaucracy to take over. we have billions in planning and no space vehicle. it is a case study in why we would fundamentally overhaul the federal government and it is a tragedy and it is a national security issue. i think we've got to fundamentally rethink our program in space.

it's one of the areas where romney decided to make fun of me and i just want to say i care about space. big goals attract young people to science, engineering, technology, gives them dreams of a bigger and better future. i think it's better to have a political leader who paints a picture of a future work working -- worth working for than to have a laider who offers no hope. so this gentleman standing here gets last -- you're either really, really tall, or you're standing on something. >> i have a question that no candidate has greased -- addressed. number one, your feelings on the n.r.a., your views on begun control and keeping the constitution intact? >> i am a life member of the national ruffle association. i got -- rifle association. i got an a rating every year i was in congress by them. i believe in the right to bear

arms. if you notice the second amendment does not give you the right to bear arms. it says the right to bear arms shall not be abridged because the founding fathers believed the right to bear arms preceded the constitution and was inherited from god as your right to protect yourself and reserve your freedom. so i think you can count on me being very solid in that front and i'm also very solidly committed to preserving the constitution. i've written books on it. "a nation like no other" is an example the let me -- frankly this place is so jam-packed, it's a little hard to imagine how we're going to do it and it's going to drive my staff crazy because they didn't want me to do it but it's -- i would suggest anybody who wants to

come up is patient, we want you to come up and we want to see all of you because i don't want you to come and not have a chance to see us the thank you very much. [applause] >> keep this in your purse. >> oh, i thank you. >> do you want something to drink, sir? >> no, i'm fine. >> ok. i'm going to try to good -- >> i've been living over in [inaudible]