Romney Begins Offering Specifics on Campaign Trail
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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images(LOS ANGELES) — In his first speech since advisers vowed to offer a more detail-centric campaign, Mitt Romney began to offer specifics of his proposed policies but stopped short of offering many new initiatives.
It was a speech delivered to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and was one tailored to the predominately Hispanic audience, the candidate pointing out the unemployment rate for Hispanics is more than 10 percent, higher than the national employment rate, which is currently 8.1 percent.
And while Romney did offer more easy-to-understand specifics on how he’d balance the budget — by “cutting subsidies for things like Amtrak, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting” — Romney didn’t go further to suggest which agencies he’d cut, as he has done previously in closed-door fundraisers.
In fact, the specifics Romney offered Monday were those he has given before on the stump, but they show a new desire to give voters more details on what a Romney White House would do.
Romney offered details of his five-point turnaround plan that he has mentioned before, but as campaign adviser Ed Gillespie told reporters Monday morning, voters are, “just now starting to lock in” and are just, “starting to look for more information and new information.”
He mentioned details heard earlier during his campaign about immigration, including his desire to “fix our immigration system” by establishing an employment verification system that employers could use to ensure that the people they are hiring are legally in the country.
And on boosting the education system, Romney said he’d do that by promoting school choice, empowering, “the parents of our low-income and special-needs students to choose where their child goes to school.”
And on balancing the budget, Romney crunched the specific numbers for the crowd here, proposing to get federal spending down to 20 percent of the GDP and vowing to, “pursue a five percent cut in non-security discretionary spending.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio