On Campus in Iowa, Gingrich Touts Vision for Science and Technology

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich told Iowa State students on Friday that he believed science and technology was on the cusp of an explosion that the current government wouldn't be able to handle.

“In the next 25 years we will have four to seven times more science than we had in the last 25,” Gingrich said.

People are living longer and differently, he said adding that today's world is very different than the world of “our parents and grandparents and we haven't adjusted to it yet.”

The greatest indicator is our government, he said.

“Government bureaucracies are built not to change,” he said.

The stop at the Memorial Union was one of six public appearances in Iowa in two days where Gingrich told people that his campaign lacked money and mud slinging, but that he did have some ideas.

He unveiled his in Des Moines and shared a part of it with a room of 100 people comprised mostly of Iowa State University students during a brief speech at the Memorial Union Friday. He said the setting let him depart from his typical speech and talk outside of politics.

He told students that fields within science and technology were exploding and that U.S. government moved too slow to keep up.

Gingrich said No. 8 on his 21^st Century Plan would help address that problem.

In the plan, Gingrich calls for transforming the Food and Drug Administration to allow new drugs and medical treatments to be approved more quickly and to place an emphasis on brain research that would save the government trillions of dollars in health care costs for the treatment of Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.

Gingrich said he would dramatically increase brain science by eliminating the capital gains tax which would make it easier for scientists to start new companies, reorganize the FDA and build a brand new brain science project similar to the human genome project, the Apollo project to go to the moon, and the Manhattan project to develop the atomic bomb.

He said he would pay for the project by selling Alzheimer's bonds and added that his idea would be seen as controversial and that people in Washington D.C. would make fun of him.

“This will be seen as Newt's fantasy,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich met with the Iowa State Republicans organization following his speech and then toured the Virtual Reality Application Center. He planned to address the National Federation of Republican Women's convention in Kansas on Saturday.

Democrats have said most of Gingrich's ideas are not that different from the usual Republican plans to cut Social Security, eliminate Medicare and give tax breaks to the wealthy.

“Their rhetoric may differ, but every candidate in the race for the Republican nomination supports plans that would end Medicare as we know it, slash Social Security and protect tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires,” said Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Sue Dvorsky, in a prepared statement about Gingrich's plan.

Gingrich is favored by about 10 percent of Republican's and conservative independents according to a recent CNN poll. He said if he comes in first or second place in the Iowa Caucus that he will do well in the states that follow.