Newt Gingrich Running for President

Newt Gingrich has thrown his hat into the 2012 presidential race.

“I’m Newt Gingrich, and I’m announcing my candidacy for President of the United States because I believe we can return America to hope and opportunity, to full employment, to real security, to an American energy program, to a balanced budget,” Gingrich said in a video announcing his candidacy.

Gingrich is the architect of the “Contract with America” that led the Republican Party to victory in 1994 by capturing the majority in the U.S. House for the first time in 40 years. Under his leadership, Congress passed the first balanced budget in a generation, leading to the repayment of over $400 billion in debt.

“I worked with President Ronald Reagan in a very difficult period. We got jobs created again, and Americans proud of America, and the Soviet Union disappeared,” Gingrich said. “As Speaker of the House, I worked to reform welfare, to balance the budget, control spending, to cut taxes, to create economic growth. Unemployment came down from 5.6 percent to under 4.”

Gingrich is known for helping to save Medicare from bankruptcy, prompting FDA reform to help the seriously ill and initiating a new focus on research, prevention, and wellness. In 2003, he founded the Center for Health Transformation to develop free market healthcare reforms to foster a 21st Century system of health.

Gingrich stressed that one person in the Oval Office can get the job done. As he sees it, Americans have to talk together, work together, find solutions together, and insist when imposing those solutions on those forces that don’t want to change.

“There are some people that don’t mind if America becomes a wreck as long as they dominate the wreckage,” he said. “But you and I know better.”

Gingrich used strong words, suggesting Americans need to “look reality in the face, tell the truth, make the tough choices, and get the job done.” But he promised that there’s a much better America ahead with “more jobs, more prosperity, a better health system, longer lives, greater independent living.” He also promised a country that is decentralized under the 10th Amendment with “power once again back with the American people and away from the Washington bureaucracy.”