Mitt Romney slammed Newt Gingrich for his idea of offering government incentives to private companies interested in building a moon colony, saying that as the head of a company, he would fire the person who brought that idea in front of him.
“I spent 25 years in business,” Romney said. “If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I’d say, 'you’re fired.' The idea that corporate America wants to go off to the moon and build a colony there, it may be a big idea but it’s not a good idea.”
A surprisingly significant portion of Thursday’s GOP debate centered around Newt Gingrich’s ambitious plan to colonize the moon before the completion of his second term, should he be elected.
Romney accused Gingrich of pandering to Florida’s electorate with the idea.
Central Florida's East coast is known as the “Space Coast” for its significant NASA presence including the Kennedy Space Center.
“We’ve seen politicians, and Newt you’ve been part of this, go state to state and promise exactly what that state wants to hear,” Romney said. “The Speaker comes here to Florida and wants to spend untold amount of money having a colony on the moon, and I know that’s very exciting here on the Space Coast. But in South Carolina it was an interstate highway and dredging the port in Charleston. In New Hampshire it was burying a powerline coming in from Canada and building a new VA hospital in New Hampshire.”
Romney added, "This idea of going state to state and promising what people want to hear, promising billions, hundred of billions of dollars to make people happy, that’s what got us into the trouble we’re in now.”
