Newt: Supercommittee failure is “good for America”

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich told an audience at Rivier College today that if the congressional debt-reduction supercommittee failed to find a way to cut 1.2 trillion from the federal budget, it would be “good for America.”

Gingrich explained he believed the supercommittee idea was wrong from the start, MSNBC reported.

"They were trying to break out of the mess by being, in my judgment, even dumber – that is, creating a committee of 12 picked by the political leadership to magically get in a room to come up something that 535 couldn't solve,” he said, according to MSNBC. “It's a major reason I am running for president.”

Gingrich suggested that both parties should “hold a press conference this week and say, 'We're going to ask through regular order every subcommittee to find savings. We're going to do it out in the open. We're going to it with expert testimony,’” according to CBS News.

Gingrich seemed geeked that a new USA Today/Gallup poll showed that he was the top Republican candidate among registered Republicans, CBS News reported.

More from GlobalPost: Gallup poll: Gingrich, Romney tie

"I think, first, is the scale of the solutions that I propose, which are much bigger and much more comprehensive than any other person running for office," Gingrich said, according to CBS News.

Gingrich has certainly been offering a selection of unique solutions in his recent campaign speeches, the Atlantic noted. At Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government on Friday, he argued that child labor laws should be abolished so poor children could start working earlier.

"I tried for years to have a very simple model,” Gingrich said, according to CNN. “These schools should get rid of unionized janitors, have one master janitor, pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work; they'd have cash; they'd have pride in the schools. They'd begin the process of rising." He added, "Go out and talk to people who are really successful in one generation. They all started their first job at 9 to 14 years of age.”

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