Rick Santorum On FOX News Sunday: We Need To Increase Birth Rates

Rick Santorum appeared on FOX News Sunday, where he talked about his plan to triple the tax credit for children (from today's $1000 per child deduction.)

The former Pennsylvania senator talked about the "demographic winter" that is happening in Europe because of tax codes that are worse than ours in terms of promoting large families.

"Children are the greatest resource we have," he said. "They're the natural resource that creates wealth in this country."

Santorum defended himself against charges of social engineering and called criticism of his tax plan "outrageous."

"This is not social engineering," he said. "What's social engineering is the policies of the last 30 years that have robbed the family of the support that they used to have in the tax code."

On Saturday at a campaign stop in Charleston, Santorum also talked about his own children and how they have shaped his anti-abortion views. He told the crowd that his disabled daughter Bella, 3, made him realize that God looks upon him as "disabled."

"The gift that Bella gave me was the gift of looking at this disabled child who in the world's view will never be able to do anything for me other than love me," he said, according to MSNBC. "She is just a font of love as far as I' m concerned. And she made me understand that that's how the Father looks at me, disabled. Unable to do anything for him except love him. And he loves me unconditionally."

Comments

[jh72hockeymom]

10:27 AM on 02/14/2012

Of course, DIVORCE will be banned in Santorum's wonderful new world.

[jh72hockeymom]

10:26 AM on 02/14/2012

Santorum's solution for job creation. Women quit working, stay home, and pop out baby after baby. Look at all the jobs created, FOR MEN. Then, of course, ban birth control and women will be FORCED do this.

Welcome to the 17th Century.

[Xiyaturen]

08:35 PM on 01/24/2012

I'm quite surprised to see so many critics of Rick Santorum and not one reference to the new, alternative meaning to his last name. Not one mention of his "Google problem." Not one pun on the word "santorum." Is this just something my circle of friends joke about, and it hasn't had an impact on the national consciousness yet? Do people know about it and just choose to take the high road? I'm guessing the people who vote for Santorum would never use the word santorum in any other way....

[Xak999]

03:07 PM on 01/20/2012

Oh really. So Santorum doesn't think we have enough poor people for the bottom of the barrel field and factory jobs on the way to keep our class system two-tiered. He must approve of all the teenage pregnancies going on as well. Apparently, we can't zoom ahead to over-population quickly enough and now we have a candidate to insure we have slums and ghetto areas to rival Mumbai and Lima, Peru. Health care can't be quite bad enough then, if he needs more multitudes of people to bump up those statistics to make the U.S. 'keep up' with our declining systems to handle even more people than our soil (or Earth--there ARE other countries besides the United States Republicans want us to keep forgetting about) was ever designed to hold.

[RetiredVET6576]

08:32 PM on 01/16/2012

All he wants are a great number of Children with the deduction for them increased so the middle class won't have to pay as much in taxes on their W2 forms. The super rich have very few children not like the Kennedy's did back in the early 1920-30s. There are very few families today greater than three or four children. The exceptions are those who decide to have a child per year until the mother runs into menopause.

We need responsible parents who have only those number of children they are truly able to financially handle. IT is hard enough when you are poor to have health insurance and clothing and housing with more than two children. But when you make a decision based on your hormones instead of your head then you have problems. Why make the rest of America pay for mistakes being made by having more children then you can take care of financially.

[mhoffman79843791]

07:49 PM on 01/16/2012

I am not agianst a tax break for families Raising children is an expensive venture. I despise Rick Santorum however. I don't like his views on women and minorities. In 1960 JFK was running for president and the concern among voters was that JFK would take orders from the Vatican on matters to run the US. Kennedy said that he would not take orders from the Vatican and he did not. He was able to separate his religion from politics. Santorum wants every one to follow his Catholic faith and he wants to run the country based on Catholic teachings and not the U.S. Constitution. I believe that Santorum is a dangerous man and is a major risk to National Security. Not everyone in the US is Catholic or even Christian. Any president's policies should be based only on the US Constitution. I think Santorum will take orders from the Vatican on matters of national policy. He makes George W. Bush (Bush the second) look like a liberal. I did not like George W. Bush, but I despise Santorum more than I disliked George W. Bush.

[melodisong2]

08:14 PM on 01/16/2012

You don't like Santorum because you are a sane, compassionate person.

[ladywindsor1]

10:16 PM on 01/16/2012

I have never seen him suggest we should follow his Catholic faith. Can cite an example? I would be interested in seeing that

[HearMeNow1959]

11:22 PM on 01/20/2012

It's implied, honey.

[pthesmith]

07:47 PM on 01/16/2012

Careful, Santorum. Your "fear of a brown planet" is showing.

[cog702]

07:15 PM on 01/16/2012

Why should he be allowed to take my money to pay for someone else's kids?

[jim10]

07:14 PM on 01/16/2012

In the last two days comments I've made about Santorums need more children comment,that were 1or2 paragraphs long, this site has seen fit to throw out my post. Is this forum only for those that the Huffington Post agrees with. This is almost like voting. Does my vote or opinion really count. I'm not the fastest typist, so I put a lot of thought in what I have to say. If you don't want to hear my opinion just tell me to kiss off, and I'll find another means to get my voice heard.

[roseyaire]

07:13 PM on 01/16/2012

1. Sorry, Rick. I'm thinking God isn't the one one who views you as disabled.
2. So, people will have more kids if they can get more $$ via tax breaks? I worked in social services for decades; how is this any different than most all of my clients in public housing who mindlessly had child after child, usually with different people, so they could get more money in their welfare checks every month. It's not that these children were wanted or planned for at all, they were viewed mainly as a commodity. This is not the 1920's where people need to have a lot of children to increase their number of farmhands, etc. Every child deserves to be wanted. BTW, who put an end to the policy of people getting more taxpayer money for each child they popped out? I believe that was William Jefferson Clinton.

[Adam of CA]

06:34 PM on 01/16/2012

With the poor homeless and depending on every giveaway program, Rick Saint wants more births beyond what the current recession can support.
Someone give him a box of condoms to handout to the poor who subsist on habitual donations. And Rick Saint calls himself a conservative? Give me a break.

[BHooverO]

06:57 PM on 01/16/2012

Problem being that if there aren't more births we aren't going to be able to pay for all of the social programs that the left wants. It's quite the conundrum.

[melodisong2]

08:18 PM on 01/16/2012

Stop corporate welfare and we could end the deficit. Stop outsourcing and the unemployment rate would decrease. No more bailouts or raiding Social Security that people have actually paid into it. Medicare and SS are taken out of my paycheck before I see one penny of it. Entitled? You're damned right. I've been paying into the system since I was 14. You won't be giving me anything that I haven't earned.

[newsworthywoman]

12:53 PM on 02/08/2012

If you calling him Rick Saint is trying to make a joke of his Catholic faith, you have failed. If you want to say something like that, do it right. It would be Saint Rick. Not Rick Saint. This shows your intelligence.

[Adam of CA]

03:55 PM on 02/08/2012

My intelligence was focused on modifying his last name, while your focus is to insult.
By the way, it is Rick Saint who is proclaiming to be the PURE conservative. Thus, he has earned the nickname.

[ProChoiceGrandma]

06:33 PM on 01/16/2012

For such a sanctimonious prude, Karen was living quite the pampered life with her sugar-daddy boyfriend for 6 years before she met Rick. Good article, including a picture of young Karen with her sugar-daddy. May we presume she was on birth control for those 6 years?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/01/15/mrs-santorum-s-abortion-doctor-boyfriend.html

[melodisong2]

08:19 PM on 01/16/2012

Disgusting. I read the article. She even offered to with someone to get an abortion. Not sure why she is against abortion for everyone else as she had one herself.

[newsworthywoman]

12:56 PM on 02/08/2012

It's called repenting for your sins. Ever heard of Crystalina Evert? You should read up her story.

[jim10]

06:10 PM on 01/16/2012

Rennycat, I agree 100% with everything you said, keep your views coming, makes great sense.

[queequag]

06:05 PM on 01/16/2012

Santorum may be pro-family but he is definitely anti business. How would my venture-capital plans for home vasectomies (only with a wife's assistance) fit in to his economic/family plan? Think about me as a job-creator, stymied by his "pro-life" "anti-tax" vision thing. I tell ya, there's no place left ta make a buck in America

[ProRanger7777]

06:03 PM on 01/16/2012

Mr Santorum is out of touch. Most working people have already cut back on the number of children, because they are responsible,and only have what they can afford and support. But the rest of the country who gets a check once a month, free food,medical,dental,etc are pumping out kids like its goin out of style. And why not? Oncle Sugar gives them more money for every kid, pays all the medical bills, and at the end of each year they send them a nice fat check (EIC) for every kid. A family in town got $9300 last year tax return,even though they dont work, and dont pay taxes. How do I know? Because they bought a used boat with it and bragged about how it didnt cost them a dime. Pretty good deal huh? And if uncle Barry gets back in, he wants to do even more. No Mr Santorum, responsible people cant afford to have any more kids right now. See, WE have to pay for them ourselves.

[James Tarr]

07:22 PM on 01/16/2012

You don't think an extra 2000 bucks is enough to help pay for raising a kid for an entire year? What is the matter with you anyway?!? /sarcasm off

[Exadyne]

09:08 PM on 01/16/2012

You do realize the EIC stands for EARNED Income Credit? If they didn't EARN some INCOME, they didn't get the CREDIT. So either they didn't get th EIC or they didn't work, not both.

[themeekeer]

03:05 PM on 01/17/2012

Or they broke the law with one of Dubya's wonderful loopholes.