Rick Santorum
Historical Details
Position on Issues
Against| Read My Position
Opposes any path to citizenship or permanent work permits for illegal/undocumented immigrants
Against| Read My Position
Candidate's Twitter Feed, 2014
"Join our fight for more parental control in education! Stop #commoncore"
Other| Read My Position
"You know, I said this at the N.R.A.: I think a well-armed family is a safe family; a well-armed America is a safer America. I think if you look at anything, from all of these attacks that have taken place, is if people actually had had weapons there those attacks would have been thwarted and people's lives would have been saved."
For| Read My Position
"The ratification of a Balanced Budget Amendment will force future congresses and administrations to not just cut the low-hanging fruit of discretionary spending, but also grab onto the third rail of American politics - entitlements."
Against| Read My Position
"I believe the earth gets warmer, and I also believe the earth gets cooler, and I think history points out that it does that and that the idea that man through the production of CO2 which is a trace gas in the atmosphere and the manmade part of that trace gas is itself a trace gas is somehow responsible for climate change is, I think, just patently absurd when you consider all of the other factors, El Nino, La Nina, sunspots, you know, moisture in the air. There's a variety of factors that contribute to the earth warming and cooling, and to me this is an opportunity for the left to create -- it's a beautifully concocted scheme because they know that the earth is gonna cool and warm. It's been on a warming trend so they said, 'Oh, let's take advantage of that and say that we need the government to come in and regulate your life some more because it's getting warmer,' just like they did in the seventies when it was getting cool, they needed the government to come in and regulate your life because it's getting cooler. It's just an excuse for more government control of your life, and I've never been for any scheme or even accepted the junk science behind the whole narrative."
For| Read My Position
Candidate's Website, 2015
Santorum supports a 20% flat income tax on all tax brackets, abolishing the IRS.
Against| Read My Position
"Planned Parenthood should not just be defunded, it should be prosecuted."
For| Read My Position
"I think federal laws should be enforced, and I think Colorado is violating the federal law. And if we have controlled substances, they're controlled substances for a reason. The federal law is there for a reason, and the states shouldn't have the option to violate federal law."
Other| Read My Position
Santorum supports deploying troops to the Middle East to fight the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh). "The bottom line is we need to be aggressive in taking back that land. Why? Because the whole legitimacy of a Caliphate is based upon holding land. If they do not hold land, they lose legitimacy. When we take back land and we drive them out of Iraq, they lose legitimacy."
For| Read My Position
Supports a "drill everywhere" policy
For| Read My Position
In an interview with Jake Tapper Santorum said, "Our best care is in our private hospitals. We need to give access to our veterans to the best care in private hospitals, and take the VA system to one that specializes in areas where veterans have unique prosthetics, wound care, PTSD, and things related to the battlefield injuries that are in some respects unique to our veteran population."
For| Read My Position
Candidate's Website, 2015
Santorum's plan for a flat tax includes a 20% flat tax on all business income
For| Read My Position
Candidate's Website, 2016
"Rick was the author of legislation outlawing the heinous act known as partial-birth abortion and he championed the fight to pass the 'Born Alive Infant Protection Act' and the 'Unborn Victims of Violence Act.'"
For| Read My Position
"I believe that all innocent human life should be protected. With respect to the death penalty we're not talking about innocent human life."
For| Read My Position
"This act's been around for a long time, and it's not like there are stories about horrible things that have happened to people. I don't like bulk collection, but the Patriot Act has worked and we have to realize we're at war."
For| Read My Position
"I have a three-step concrete approach to dealing with Social Security. #1, pass the Social Security Guarantee Act, which says that if you're born before 1950, your benefits cannot be changed and your cost of living increases are guaranteed. #2, take the surplus that's coming in right now and actually put it into individual accounts so people have ownership of this surplus instead of the money being raided to pay for current government expenditures. And #3, give younger workers the opportunity to have personal retirement accounts. Those personal retirement accounts will grow faster and produce more."
For| Read My Position
Supports a repeal of "Obamacare"
For| Read My Position
"Dodd Frank is a disaster and needs to be redone"
For| Read My Position
"We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that was created, it was created in Griswold - Griswold was the contraceptive case - and abortion. And now we're just extending it out. And the further you extend it out, the more you - this freedom actually intervenes and affects the family. You say, well, it's my individual freedom. Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that's antithetical to strong healthy families. Whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, where it's sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family."
Against| Read My Position
"[Contraception] is something that is affordable, available. You don't need insurance for these types of relatively small expenditures. This is simply someone trying to impose their values on somebody else, with the arm of the government doing so. That should offend everybody, people of faith and no faith that the government could get on a roll that is that aggressive."
For| Read My Position
"I think that's a state issue. I support voter ID. In my opinion, the only reason you don't have a voter ID is you want to continue to perpetrate fraud."
Against| Read My Position
"First off, so much of that trade deal has nothing to do with trade. Secondly, the trade component of it is primarily lowering tariffs [and] ignores some of the bigger problems, which is non-tariff barriers like, for example, currency manipulation."
Other| Read My Position
Opposes Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran
