CHICAGO — Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty pitched an economic plan Tuesday that includes deep cuts in personal and business taxes to spur the struggling U.S. economy but would add to deficits in the short term in the hope that badly needed jobs would follow.
The former Minnesota governor’s plan aims for a bullish 5 percent annual growth that would balance the federal budget while forgoing trillions of dollars in tax revenue. Pawlenty’s pitch assumes the benefits of his plan would kick in and eventually make up for its initial costs.
His own team acknowledged the assumptions were aggressive. One critic called it “patently ridiculous.”
“Growing at 5 percent a year rather than the current level of 1.8 percent would net us millions of new jobs, trillions of dollars in new wealth, put us on a path to saving our entitlement programs,” Pawlenty said in his first detailed speech on economic policy.
