Millions will tune in tonight for the GOP presidential debate to watch the leading contenders for the nomination engage in all-out warfare. It will present another chance for Ben Carson to make his case for why he should be the next occupant of the Oval Office. With the Iowa caucus just weeks away, the stakes for the renowned former surgeon are, indeed, high.
[Related: [By The Numbers] Where the GOP Candidates Stand Going Into Their Sixth Debate]
His calm demeanor and admittedly anti-PC style vaulted him to frontrunner status in October. His focus on small government, faith, and family values has grown his conservative, evangelical base among the GOP candidates while his controversial comments related to immigration, same sex marriage, and national defense earned him a bevy of progressive detractors. Within the last several weeks, campaign gaffes and a major management shake-up has forced him to realign his camp. In the most recent, Des Moines Register poll, he currently trails Ted Cruz and Donald Trump and is neck-and-neck with Marco Rubio for third place among Iowa voters.
While Cruz and Trump continue campaigns of fear and divisiveness and Rubio offers his wonkish proposals, Carson says he has retooled his approach and expanded his outreach efforts. In the exclusive interview with Chief Content Officer Derek T. Dingle at BLACK ENTERPRISE headquarters, Carson makes his case for why he’s the best choice for the economic and social advancement of African Americans—and the nation.
Derek T. Dingle: So what’s the current state of the campaign?
Ben Carson: Well, it’s been a very interesting road, no question about it…lots of excitement. We’ve recently made some major operational changes which seem to have really increased the esprit de corps. For me it’s about what’s happening for our country and is it going to be possible for us to change the direction and really start moving upward again rather than sideways or downwards.
You led the polls in late October and now you’ve dropped considerably. You have three major contests coming—Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and then shortly after that Super Tuesday. What is the strategy to win those races and ultimately the GOP nomination?
[[Candidate Watch] Carson Surges Past Trump in Latest Poll]
I think the key thing for me is exposure. Whenever I go to a rally, I always get the same comments, “Wow, you’re so different than they portray you to be. I love you.” The more people I get out in front of, the better. A lot of people in the media and in the established political realm are not super excited about someone like me because I don’t play by the rules. I don’t accept money from special interest groups who want to influence you. I criticize the established structure.
It’s particularly important in some of the minority communities and the black community to stake out a different path now. We’ve allowed the government to dictate for such a long period of time who we are and what we should be doing. In the meantime, poverty rates are getting worse, out of wedlock births are going up, crime and incarceration. All these things are moving in the wrong direction. This is in a community that has over a trillion dollars in assets. Remember, there are less than 10 countries in the world that have a trillion dollar GDP. We have enormous resources. We just have to learn how to use them.
Continue reading on the next page…
Dingle asks Carson how he would enable blacks to start businesses and build wealth.
In terms of gaining African American support, large numbers shun the Republican Party because they believe it doesn’t care about them. And you’ve had challenges connecting with many African Americans in terms of statements you’ve made. There has been a situation in which you’ve been idolized for your professional accomplishments and now chided related to your stand on issues. Given that fact, how do you bring the African American community at large on board?
I think the key thing again is exposure. It’s like last April when I came here to New York and spoke to The National Action Network where Al Sharpton preaches. A lot of people said, “Oh, he’s lost it. He’s lost his mind.” Even Al Sharpton said, “Carson and I don’t agree about anything. I doubt we could agree that today is Wednesday, which actually is not true, but is a perception, but we need to listen to him.” I got up, they weren’t that excited to see me, but I started talking about economic empowerment…faith and family…the effects of out-of-wedlock births. I started talking about how to use your economic power in order to gain independence from the society [and] about the various contributions that black people had made toward the development of America. By the time I was finished, I got a standing ovation. They all wanted autographs and pictures.
I’m the very same person that I was before I joined the Republican Party. The principles are the things that we really need to get out there, the values of family, of faith, of personal responsibility. These used to be things that resonated very strongly in the black community.
White households on average have 13 times more wealth than African American households. What specifically are you proposing to change that equation?
A number of things. One thing, there’s over $2.1 trillion in American money sitting overseas. The reason is it’s not being brought back is because we have the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world. I’ve spent many afternoons sitting around corporate board tables talking about what we’re going to do with trillions of dollars because we couldn’t bring them back. What I would propose is a six month hiatus in taxes…corporate taxes on that money overseas to allow it to be repatriated to our country. But the stipulation would be that 10% has to be used in enterprise zones to create jobs for unemployed people and people on welfare. These are places that are generally put into economically depressed areas. They will incentivize large corporations to invest in those communities. Some of those communities would be largely African American, some might be Hispanic.
That would be the biggest economic stimulus package that upsets FDR’s New Deal and wouldn’t cost the taxpayer one penny. That’s low-hanging fruit. It also gets corporations back into the thought process of contributing; of investing in their communities, investing in the people around them because that’s really what has had the most profound, beneficial effect throughout history in our country.
One of our readers asked how you would determine taxes are paid by all legal U.S. citizens to address the deficit.
What I have proposed is a flat tax: a 14.9% tax across- the-board, starting at the 150% poverty level. No deductions, no loopholes. That way, everybody is hit the same and everybody is hit proportionately. If your neighbor makes 10 times more money than you do, your neighbor will pay 10 times more taxes than you do. Now, the people below the 150% line, they will still pay a de minimis tax but it won’t be at 14.9% because many of those people are struggling to get out of poverty. We don’t [put] the extra burden on them but we want everybody to have skin in the game.
One of the arguments from a number of economists is that you would lose revenues with a flat tax and, in turn, exacerbate the budget deficit problem.
Not true. The reason that we settled on the 14.9% level is because we’ve done all the analyses and what do we need in order to have the appropriate resources to run the government. If you take out the deductions and the loopholes that will work perfectly fine.
You would shrink the government? Which departments would you target to cut?
Definitely the government needs to be shrunken. The government has 4.1 million federal employees. That is absurd. It has 645 government agencies and sub-agencies. This is relatively easy. Tens of thousands of federal employees retire each year. Don’t rehire them. You can shift people around to cover critical positions but do not rehire. You do that for a few years and you’re down to a reasonable level. I would bring in the administrators of each agency and I would say cut your budget by 2-3%. If you can’t do that, resign right now. Every department has 2-3% of fat in them. I guarantee it. [This would be] very different than what happened a few years ago with the sequester. I think they were told to cut in a way that people would feel it the most so that no one would ever say cut the budget again.
Carson responds to Dingle’s questions on race and police reform.
What is the next plank on your agenda?
The other big thing is education. Education is a great divide in our country. It doesn’t matter what your economic or racial background is, you get a good education, you write your own ticket. Look at what we found, the people who are best educated are home-schoolers, next best private schoolers, next best charter schoolers, least best public schoolers. Where are most of our people? In public schools. We need to have a school choice program. We need to have a voucher program that needs to be national in scope because that’s the only thing that will force the public schools to get better.
Why not embrace national education standards so that all students gain the same level of education so that they can be better prepared for the 21st century workforce?
There’s nothing wrong with having standards, but you have to look at data. There’re two ways to do things. You can do it based on ideology and say, “These are the best ideals now let’s do things based on that,” or you can do it based on data. What has been found is that when you make decisions based on evidence, they tend to be much more solid decisions and much more successful than when you base them on ideology. It’s largely ideological to say, “Let’s just have a national standard and let’s have everybody live up to it,” and you know, we’ll have this big bureaucracy with that. We’ll make things better for everybody.” It sounds nice, but it doesn’t work.
There have been charter schools that have underperformed public schools.
I agree, but remember when people have choice; they’re not stuck in those schools. They can go to the one that does perform well, which will force the one that is not performing well either to go out of business or to get up to speed.
A question dealing with terrorism: There’s a terrorist attack on the nation and the Dow drops 1,000 points. As president, what would you do?
First of all, I would deal with the terrorist attack. The Dow going down 1,000 points, that’s a secondary issue as far as I’m concerned. First of all, you need to assure that the situation is under control and you need to reassure the American people that appropriate steps are being taken to deal with it. That will have a secondary ameliorating effect on the business environment and on the Dow. You always want to prioritize.
We’ve witnessed an alarming number of deaths of African Americans at the hands of police officers. What is your policy regarding police reform?
[Black Activists Demand Chicago Mayor and Police Superintendent Removal]
Clearly there have been some problems with rogue policemen and policemen who do not act professionally. That’s not the vast majority of them. Nevertheless, the whole concept of the body cameras is an excellent concept. I think that even better concept is introducing police into the community early and on a regular basis.
I was talking to a policeman in Baltimore and he makes it his duty to go to a certain neighborhood every day and he walks through the neighborhood. Everybody knows him. Everybody is always inviting him in, the people trust him. They call him. When those relationships are not there, that’s when you get the distrust. It’s frequently the distrust that creates the problem.
When there’s a shooting similar to the tragedy involving Tamir Rice, would a Carson administration Justice Department investigate those cases?
[The Man Who Killed Tamir Rice]
Certainly. If there’s blatant … Like what happened in Chicago with the McDonald case. I mean that’s absurd and obviously you want to make sure that things like that are appropriately dealt with. I am every bit also concerned about the high murder rates that are occurring in our streets. I don’t want to just concentrate on one thing. When we talk about for instance black lives matter, I’d add one word to that, and that’s all…all black lives matter including the No. 1 cause of death in the black community, abortion.
CEO Earl “Butch” Graves, Jr. shares a moment with Ben Carson at BE’s offices.
I want you to address the comments that you’ve made about Black Lives Matters being “silly” and “sickening.” Shouldn’t there be protest from communities when you have cases such as Tamir Rice, Laquan McDonald? Shouldn’t we have groups bring that to the attention of the public?
I don’t have any problem with people bringing attention to it. I do have a problem when people disrupt what other people are doing, when they don’t do it in an orderly way, and when they leave out large segments of people who need somebody to be concerned about them. I’m very concerned about all of those young black males who are dying on our streets every single day and nobody seems to be interested. The Black Lives Matters people don’t seem to be interested…the police don’t seem to be interested… society at large doesn’t seem to be interested. Nobody seems to care and they just die. That’s what I’m concerned about.
So if you were elected president how would you use your bully pulpit to address this?
You got to get to the root causes of the problem. Why do we have so many young black teenage boys who end up in these situations? Well, we have to be honest about it to recognize that a lot of those boys are being born into a situation where there is no father figure, there is no authoritarian figure, there is no major role model figure. They don’t particularly learn how to relate to authority. Then they find themselves in these situations where they’re faced with authority without having the background for dealing with it and frequently that ends up in a tragic situation.
We need to be talking about how do we create mentorship programs so that we begin to get the right kind of education for these young men, but more importantly how do we begin to reintroduce into our communities the concept of family and family values and the importance of marriage and marriage relationships, and not allow ourselves to be completely fractured by the progressive movement that says there is no such thing as an ideal family.
How do you implement that from a policy standpoint?
You look at the things that work. I have an opportunity to speak at a lot of nonprofit organizations. For instance, many of them help young women who become pregnant usually by accident. What they do is provide them with alternatives and support. Then they hook up with other organizations that will help that young woman by providing good child support so that she can finish her education…so that she can get her GED or her associates degree, bachelor’s degree or master’s degree, learn to be independent and teach her children that independence. That’s the kind of thing that breaks the cycle. Government can support those kinds of programs, encourage and unite those programs, but those need to be private sector programs. Government programs just have a tendency to metastasize and become big layers of bureaucracies.
If you get through the primaries and you’re the nominee, you’re going to have to get votes from a diverse group of constituents – African Americans, gays, millennials, women, Latinos, Muslims. How do you do that when you’ve made statements that have alienated certain groups? How do you get them to support your campaign?
Early on in this process I did make some inflammatory statement. You’ll notice that I don’t do that anymore because people can’t hear what you’re saying anymore after that.
[The Problem with the Stump for Trump Girls]
Is that part of the campaign reboot?
That’s been going on for quite a while. You’ll notice that I really don’t do very much of that any more. You just have to be very careful when you say things. Whether they’re true or not is not important but if they create so much distraction that people can’t hear what you’re saying, then there’s no point in saying things like that. That’s something that you learn with time.
