Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina Announces Presidential Run
(CBSSacramento.com/AP) - Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina announced her candidacy for president this morning.
She's the first female candidate to officially seek the Republican party's nomination.
Fiorina says she's the best person for the job because she understands how the economy works.
The former executive has never held public office.
In 2010, she unsuccessfully ran for a senate seat, losing to democratic Senator Barbara Boxer.
Here is a snapshot of where Fiorina stands on issues likely to be debated during the 2016 Republican presidential nomination race, as she opens her campaign:
IMMIGRATION
Fiorina opposes allowing immigrants in the country illegally to stay, even if they plead guilty to illegal entry and pay penalties and past-due taxes.
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FOREIGN POLICY
Fiorina is critical of the treaty between the U.S. and Iran aimed at regulating the Middle Eastern nation's nuclear program. She says President Barack Obama is "rewarding bad behavior" on the part of Iran and U.S. officials should be willing to walk away from a bad deal.
An adviser to 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain, Fiorina says she would not have supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq if she had known the weapons of mass destruction presumed held by Saddam Hussein would never be found.
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BUDGET AND ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS
Fiorina favors zero-based budgeting, which means government programs would be financed based on their needs instead of a percentage increase over the previous period. She has also proposed performance-based pay for civil servants, not union-negotiated contracts.
She supports keeping in place all of the tax cuts enacted by President George W. Bush in 2001, which means a larger deficit. On the expensive entitlements of Social Security and Medicare, she has not said what she might cut in the programs or how she might change eligibility.
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EDUCATION
Fiorina has said she favors making changes to Common Core education standards, a set of voluntary math, reading and language art benchmarks established by a bipartisan group of governors and in effect in more than 40 states. They've become less popular among Republicans since the Obama administration endorsed them as an acceptable tool in its Race to the Top program.
She says likely GOP rival Jeb Bush is "dead wrong" to support Common Core.
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SOCIAL ISSUES
Fiorina supports equal rights under the law for gay couples, in contrast with some of her rivals.
At Hewlett-Packard, committed gay couples received the same benefits as traditionally married men and women. That's influenced her position, which is that it is unfair for the government to protect the rights of some citizens, and not others.
She opposes abortion rights except in cases of rape, incest or when the woman's life is at risk from the pregnancy.
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CLIMATE CHANGE
Fiorina does not deny that that Earth's climate is gradually warming but has said there's no point to making wholesale policy changes when other leading greenhouse gas producers are not pulling their weight on the issue.
In an opinion piece published by The Washington Post in October, Fiorina urged China and India to join the community of nations trying to address global warming. She said the U.S. approach on global warming should not be to burden businesses when they are trying to recover and compete internationally.
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