Newt Gingrich 2012: What Are His Positions?

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His proposal for Social Security is similar to his proposal for Medicare: let people who have been paying into the system for years keep their benefits as promised, but encourage younger people to create personal savings accounts to replace Social Security benefits, because "you know you'll have more money at the end of your lifetime if you control it than the politicians," he said at a debate in Tampa, Fla., in September. Workers and employers would contribute the same amount of money to those accounts as they currently pay in Social Security payroll tax, but the workers, rather than the government, would control the accounts.

Health care:

Like every candidate for the Republican nomination, Gingrich has vowed to repeal President Obama's 2010 health care law. "The big-government Obamacare approach does not address the root causes of America's health care crisis," his Web site says. Instead, it creates layers of new taxes, regulations and bureaucracies that will ultimately make our problems worse, not better."

He has proposed a 13-point "Patient Power" plan that would, among other things, give tax credits or deductions to make insurance more affordable, allow seniors to opt out of Medicare in favor of a privatized program, prohibit insurers from canceling coverage or increasing rates when people get sick, create a new electronic system to reduce health care fraud, and limit medical malpractice lawsuits through tort reform. He has also called for more funding for medical research to treat conditions like Alzheimer's disease and thus save the government money in the long run.

Job creation:

Gingrich has named several pieces of legislation that he would work to repeal as president. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 created a new agency to regulate accounting firms and set new standards for corporate governance and financial disclosures, and Gingrich says it has discouraged companies from investing in the United States by creating overly burdensome and complicated regulations. The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 set a slew of regulations to "improve accountability and transparency in the financial system," and Gingrich argues that this, too, is "killing small independent banks, crippling loans to small businesses and crippling home sales." The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 encouraged banks to lend to low- and middle-income individuals, and Gingrich blames it in part for causing the 2008 subprime lending crisis.

He has also vowed to improve the economy as a whole, thus creating jobs, by reforming energy policy, repealing "Obamacare" and breaking up the government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage companies (although a recent Bloomberg News investigation revealed that Freddie Mac paid Gingrich $1.6 million between 1999 and 2008 for consulting work).

Taxes:

Gingrich wants to make the Bush tax cuts, which have been extended twice but are set to expire in 2013, permanent in order to "promote stability in the economy." He has also proposed a tax-code overhaul similar to Texas Gov. Rick Perry's, which would give taxpayers a choice between their current rate and a 15 percent flat tax. His plan would keep the current deductions for charitable donations and home ownership and add a personal deduction of $12,000 for every individual. "This deduction is well above the current poverty level, ensuring that the new system does not unfairly target the poor," his Web site says.