Gary Johnson - Political Positions

Political Positions

Johnson holds fiscally conservative, socially progressive views, a philosophy of limited government, and military noninterventionism. As well as a libertarian, he has also identified as a classical liberal. Johnson is in favor of simplifying and reducing taxes. During his governorship, Johnson cut taxes fourteen times and never increased them. Due to his stance on taxes, political pundit David Weigel described him as "the original Tea Party candidate". Johnson is an advocate of the FairTax, a proposal which would abolish all federal income, corporate and capital gains taxes, and replace them with a 23% tax on consumption of all non-essential goods, while providing a regressive rebate to households according to income level. He argues that this would assure transparency in the tax system and incentivize the private sector to create "tens of millions of jobs."

Johnson supports balancing the federal budget immediately. He supports "slashing government spending", including Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. His plans include cutting Medicare and Medicaid by 43 percent and turning them into block grant programs, with control of spending in the hands of the states to create "fifty laboratories of innovation". He advocates passing a law allowing for state bankruptcy and expressly ruling out a federal bailout of any states. Johnson has expressed opposition to the Federal Reserve System, which he cites as massively devaluing the strength of the U.S. dollar, and would sign legislation to eliminate it. He otherwise supports an audit of the central bank, and urged Members of Congress in July 2012 to vote in favor of Ron Paul's Federal Reserve Transparency Act.

In his campaign for the Libertarian Party nomination, he stated he opposed foreign wars and pledged to cut the military budget by 43 percent in his first term as president. He would cut the military's overseas bases, uniformed and civilian personnel, research and development, intelligence, and nuclear weapons programs. He is opposed to the United States' involvement in the War in Afghanistan and the Libyan Civil War. He has stated that he does not believe Iran is a military threat, would use his presidential power to prevent Israel from attacking Iran, and would not follow Israel, or any other ally, into a war that it had initiated.

Johnson is a strong supporter of civil liberties and received the highest score of any candidate from the American Civil Liberties Union for supporting drug decriminalization and having a pro-choice stance on abortion, while opposing censorship and regulation of the Internet, the Patriot Act, enhanced airport screenings, and the indefinite detention of prisoners. He is in favor of the separation of church and state, and has quoted that he does not "seek the counsel of God" when determining his political agenda. Johnson endorsed same-sex marriage in 2011; he has since called for a constitutional amendment protecting equal marriage rights, and criticized Obama's position on the issue as to have "thrown this question back to the states." Johnson has been a long time advocate of legalizing cannabis and has said that if he were President, he would remove it from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act as well as issue an executive order pardoning non-violent cannabis offenders. Johnson opposes gun control and has said "I'm a firm believer in the second amendment and so I would not have signed legislation banning assault weapons or automatic weapons."