Nikki Haley Says Government's Problem Is Spending, Data Backs ...

Republican presidential candidate former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley smiles after a Fox News Town ... [+] Hall, Monday, Jan. 8, 2024, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

During a January 4 town hall event, the CNN moderator pressed former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley about the signed commitment she made to oppose and veto net tax hikes if she is elected President of the United States. Based on the framing of the question, however, CNN appears to not be familiar with Haley’s record.

CNN’s Erin Burnett asked Nikki Haley why she made a written commitment to not raise federal taxes now when she didn’t make a similar pledge while running for state senate in South Carolina nearly two decades ago. CNN either didn’t realize or failed to do enough homework to know that Nikki Haley made a written commitment to oppose net tax hikes long before the most recent one she signed last fall in her bid to be the Republican presidential nominee. In fact, Haley first signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge in 2010, when she was running for governor.

CNN tried to portray Haley’s commitment to opposing net tax hikes if elected president as a new position when, in reality, Haley made a similar pledge nearly 14 years ago to all South Carolinians, promising she would not sign a net tax hike into law if elected Governor. After winning that election in 2010, Haley subsequently kept that commitment to taxpayers for the entirety of her governorship.

As her primary opponents did during the fall 2023 debates, former President Donald Trump’s campaign is now accusing Haley of having championed a gas tax hike during her time as governor. That charge is false at worst, as was previously documented in this space, and misleadingly incomplete at best. In fact, the campaign to raise South Carolina’s gas tax did not achieve its objective until Haley left the Palmetto State following her appointment to Donald Trump’s cabinet in 2017.

Setting aside CNN’s apparent ignorance as to Haley’s previous pledge to oppose net tax hikes, Haley explained at the CNN town hall why she has once again taken net tax hikes off the table if elected. Haley explained to Burnett that she’s concluded the federal government’s main problem is overspending, not a lack of taxation:

“I will tell you now, government has way too much money,” Haley told CNN’s Burnett. “There’s waste in every agency, there is waste in the way we govern, every bit of it. And we have to — the first thing I want to do is go to every single agency, pull down all the bureaucracy, the red tape, the programs we don’t need to have. Government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people. And we are seeing a bloated government that needs to go on a diet. And I think the only way we do that is we sit there and tell them, it is now time for them to show the taxpayer return on investment. It is not time for the taxpayer to continue to have to work for government.”

In arguing that the federal government’s problem is on the spending and not the tax side of the ledger, Nikki Haley has a lot of data supporting her case. Take the federal government’s spending record over the past decade alone. Had federal spending grown in line with the rate of population growth plus inflation for the last 10 years, the federal government would’ve spent $1.6 trillion less in 2022 than was actually spent that year.

“Washington receives more than enough tax revenue,” Dan Mitchell, an economist and co-founder of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, noted in October. “Receipts have increases 137% since 2000, well beyond the 101% combined increase of inflation and population.

“Had the federal government limited the growth in spending to the rate of population growth plus inflation during the last decade, the national debt would have increased by $2.6 trillion instead of the actual $11.3 trillion,” said Vance Ginn, senior fellow at Americans for Tax Reform and a former White House Office of Management and Budget chief economist. “And if this had been done over the last two decades since 2003, the national debt would have increased by less than $500 billion instead of $19 trillion.”

A new CNN/University of New Hampshire poll found Nikki Haley is gaining ground in the Granite State and now trailing the former president by single digits. That poll of New Hampshire voters found 39% support Trump and 32% back Haley, while Chris Christie, who dropped out of the race on January 10, came in at third with 12%. The New Hampshire primary, the nation’s first, will be held on January 23. Prior to that on January 10, Nikki Haley will square off against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who also signed a written commitment to not enact any net tax hikes both as a governor and presidential candidate, in what will be the final debate before the Iowa caucuses.