DETROIT – Ohio Governor John Kasich is not a presidential candidate, yet, but he told the Detroit Economic Club at a luncheon Monday that lessons learned in the recoveries of Detroit and Cleveland can carry to improving the economy nationally.
While he is not rushing to join the list of announced candidates, Kasich said he would expect a stronger showing than he had in 2000.
Kasich said the state’s urban centers would be the key to national growth and that Detroit, while still struggling behind some others, could not be left behind.
“It’s not like you got the hot potato and we’re home free,” he said. “When a place like Detroit hurts, the country hurts.”
Ohio has seen some of the same efforts to revive its central cities, he said. “Cleveland’s on the rebound and there are lessons to learn there.”
The younger generation moving back to the inner cities generates both the need to concentrate on their improvement and the hope that they will recover, he said. “The flame will burn bright and Detroit will be back on its feet again, I have no doubt,” he said.
Kasich said his work in Ohio, where he has served in the Senate and as a member of Congress as well as governor, gives him the experience needed to resolve problems nationally.
“Ohio is a microcosm of America,” he said.
But he also said he would be a stronger leader than many of those running, whom he accused, though not by name, of “namby-pamby, focus group, poll-driven decision making.”
He said leaders have to make decisions based on their own values.
Kasich also highlighted his efforts to work toward compromise.
“A great leader figures out how to bring people together,” he said. “I’ve been involved in more negotiation, more compromise to the betterment of our country.”
And he said it is not just politicians who have rejected the idea of compromise.
“In America today, we don’t agree on anything,” he said. “We’re all living in our own silo and we feel righteous living in our silo.”
He acknowledged also that he would be running to the left of many other Republicans should he enter the race.
Among the highlights from his first term in office, he pointed to efforts to improve mental health care and drug addiction treatment.
“If you don’t treat the mentally ill and drug addicted, they revolve in and out of our prisons,” he said. “If I can get them treatment, then (they) can get a job, that’s conservatism.”
He also argued for welfare reform that would essentially mean providing more benefits. “If you’re on welfare, we have to kick dad out of the house,” he said of the current system. “If a woman takes a promotion, she loses her day care.”
He said he fixed some of that in Ohio by increasing the eligibility limit to 300 percent of poverty.
Kasich also predicted some conflict with his fellow Republicans on immigration.
“I wouldn’t favor citizenship, but I wouldn’t take it off the table,” he said.
The nation’s borders are not sufficiently secure, he said, but there are currently too many illegal immigrants in the nation to reasonably consider deporting them all. “We don’t have enough buses to take them all to the border,” he said.
But he brought his efforts to balance both the Ohio and the federal budgets as his conservative bona fides.
On the Ohio budget, he said he had erased an $8 billion deficit into a $2 billion surplus during his first term as governor.
That budget included both tax cuts for business and the working poor, as well as some additional programs.
“When a state does better, there’s more you can do for the people of the state,” he said.
He said he would not, though, be using those funds to keep business in the state. He said his administration was working with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles to keep the Jeep plant in Toledo, but said any assistance to the company would have include a return on investment for the state.
“The minute I give people money to stay, then I’ve got 20 more lined up,” he said.
At the federal level, he was chair of the U.S. House Budget Committee and helped develop the only federal budget considered balanced in recent times.
“We came up with first balanced budget since man walked on the moon,” he said.
But he was also chair of that committee during one of the first federal government shutdowns.
As to a decision on officially entering the presidential race, Kasich said that would come when he is ready. “It’s got to make sense to me and to my family,” he said.
While Kasich said he would run as hard this time as he did last, he said he is not measuring his worth by his success there.
“I feel compelled to deliver a message like this,” he said. “If people like it, they like it, and if not, I’ll play a little more golf.”
