Of Ponzis and Predators, Perry outlines policies

By Glen Johnson, Globe Staff

GREENLAND, N.H. - Following an announcement speech full of anti-Obama rhetoric, Texas Governor Rick Perry answered questions from New Hampshire political activists for nearly a half-hour on Saturday that fleshed out his policy views for a group, a state, and a country that barely knows the latest Republican presidential contender.

Like most in the GOP, Perry espoused a muscular support for Israel amid a turbulent Mideast, saying, “Israel is not ever gonna have to worry, if I’m the president to the United States, where we’re gonna be.”

Like most Republicans, he also labeled himself a fiscal conservative bent on reining in government spending. “We’re going to stop spending the money, unless I run out of ink in a veto pen,” the governor pledged.

Perry also professed a pro-business bent, a calling card of his party, especially when it comes to small business support.

“I can go small community with you; that’s how I grew up,” said the native of Paint Creek, Texas. “We didn’t even have a post office.”

But in a bold-yet-folksy way, the Texan also put his own spin on an array of questions from a crowd of more than 150.

Asked about how the country copes with the growing cost of Social Security and other entitlement programs, Perry said political leaders had to show “courage” especially in dealing with Social Security, which he labeled a “Ponzi scheme.”

He said: “I can promise you, my 27-year-old son, Social Security, under the program that we have today, will not be there.”

Perry, himself 61, pledged to back a base level of support for needy retirees, but he said calling the current retirement system a Ponzi scheme - in which contributions from one group is to pay immediate benefits to another group - is the first step in deciding how to alter it.

“I’m not afraid of having that conversation,” the governor said. “Do I have a plan yet to lay out and say here it is in black and white? I don’t. But I can promise you … these challenges are not overcomable, at all. We are Americans and we will find the way to do it.”

Perry tread more carefully around another issue that riled the party base for another Texas governor who ran for president, George W. Bush.

Perry said that before deciding how to deal with immigrants already illegally in the country, United States needed to secure its border with Mexico both to block new illegals and also to tamp down on drug-related violence.

Texas already spends $152 million on its own on that effort, he said, and the state’s governor called for both up to 1,000 National Guard troops and the non-lethal use of unmanned aerial vehicles to patrol and monitor the 1,200-mile-long Texas-Mexico border.

“You can secure it, and the way you do it is you put boots on the ground - substantial number of boots on the ground,” he said.

As for using aircraft such as Predator drones, Perry noted many unarmed aircraft are already flown in the area each day as practice for the Air Force pilots who will guide them overseas.

“Why not be flying those missions and using that real-time information to help our law enforcement?” Perry said. “Because if we will commit to that, I will suggest to you that we will be able to drive the drug cartels away from that border.”

Elsewhere on national security, Perry outlined a hawkish doctrine: “If you try to hurt the United States, we will come defeat you,” he said.

On budget issues, Perry said he supported a balanced-budget amendment “to clearly say, if it’s not coming in, we’re not going to spend it.”

More immediately, he pledged a series of executive orders to reduce government spending and regulation, as well as to halt implementation of the federal universal health care law enacted by President Obama.

“Stopping that is one of the first things we have to do as a country and as a people, because it will bankrupt this country,” he said.

Finally, on energy policy, Perry exuded a confidence in discussing the issue that is common from those hailing from such an oil-producing state.

He branded himself as “all-of-the-above” supporter of all types of energy, except for the subsidies paid for ethanol production.

“I am a supporter of nuclear energy,” he declared, noting three plants are permitted for construction in his state.

“My heart goes out for the folks in Japan, and what they’ve gone through, just that massive tragedy, but the fact is, we do not have tsunamis in Texas, and that state is an ideal state to be building nuclear power plants,” he said.