Go ahead.
They aren't really non-answers, more like, he gives a super-short summary and instead of speaking on the question extensively just tries to get to the switch-off as soon as he can.
WILLIAMS: Congressman, thank you.Over to Speaker Gingrich.
(APPLAUSE)
Mr. Speaker, as you remember, you wrote the foreword to Rick Perry's most recent book called "Fed Up," and you called him, quote, "uniquely qualified to explain what's taking place with the economy." Does that mean, in terms of job creation credentials, he has your proxy at a gathering like this?
GINGRICH: No, but it means that, if he wants to write another book, I'll write another foreword.
(LAUGHTER)
As he himself -- look, he's said himself, that was an interesting book of ideas by somebody who's not proposing a manifesto for president. And I think to go back and try to take that apart is silly.
Here comes the switchup:
But let me just use my time for a second, if I might, Brian. I served during the Reagan campaign with people like Jack Kemp and Art Laffer. We had an idea for job creation. I served as a freshman -- or as a sophomore helping pass the Reagan's jobs program. At newt.org, I put out last Friday the response to the Obama stagnation.
The fact is, if you took the peak of the Reagan unemployment, which he inherited from Carter, by last Friday, going month by month, under Ronald Reagan, we'd have 3,700,000 more Americans working.
When I was speaker, we added 11 million jobs, in a bipartisan effort, including welfare reform, the largest capital gains tax cut in history. We balanced the budget for four straight years.
The fact that President Obama doesn't come to the Reagan Library to try to figure out how to create jobs, doesn't talk to any of these three governors to learn how to create jobs, doesn't talk to Herman Cain to learn how to create jobs tells you that this is a president so committed to class warfare and so committed to bureaucratic socialism that he can't possibly be effective in jobs.
WILLIAMS: Congresswoman, time.Speaker Gingrich, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, will come to the end of his term in 2014. Would you reappoint Ben Bernanke?
GINGRICH: I would fire him tomorrow.
WILLIAMS: Why?
GINGRICH: I think he's been the most inflationary, dangerous, and power-centered chairman of the Fed in the history of the Fed. I think the Fed should be audited. I think the amount of money that he has shifted around in secret, with no responsibility, no -- no -- no accountability, no transparency, is absolutely antithetical to a free society. And I think his policies have deepened the depression, lengthened the problems, increased the cost of gasoline, and been a disaster.
I want to take the rest of my time, Brian, to go back to a question you asked that was very important. We were asked the wrong question at the last debate. The question isn't, would we favor a tax increase? The question is, how would we generate revenue?
There are three good ways. The Ronald Reagan technique put 3,700,000 more people back to work as of last Friday. You reduce government spending. You raise government revenues enormously. The committee of 12 ought to be looking at, how do you create more revenue, not how do you raise taxes.
Second, you go to energy, exactly as Michele Bachmann has said. You open up American energy, $500 billion a year here at home, enormous increase in federal revenue.
Third, we own -- with all due respect, Governor -- we own 69 percent of Alaska. That's one-and-a-half Texases. Now, let's set half of Texas -- let's set a half Texas aside for national parks. We could liberate an area the size of Texas for minerals and other development. That would raise even more revenue, not the normal Washington viewpoint.