CHICAGO, March 19 (UPI) -- Republican presidential hopefuls stumped in Illinois Monday in the final run-up before the party's presidential primary election Tuesday.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney spoke at the University of Chicago, telling his audience that President Obama's economic plan was strangling economic freedom, the Chicago Tribune reported.
"Freedom is becoming the victim of unbounded government appetite and so is economic growth, job growth and wage growth," Romney said. "As government takes more and more, there is less and less incentive to take risk, to invest, to innovate and to hire."
Just look at the weak economy, he said.
"This administration thinks our economy is struggling because the stimulus was too small," Romney said. "The truth is we're struggling because our government is too big."
In Rockford, Rick Santorum lashed out at Romney's assertion that the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania was an economic small fry "because I'm not a Wall Street financier like [Romney] was."
Santorum also repeated his assertion that he's the conservative alternative to Romney, who has a healthy lead in the polls over Santorum with Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul trailing far behind going into Tuesday's primary.
"We have someone who's certainly the choice of the establishment Republicans, someone who's turn it was," Santorum said in Dixon. "We see that so often in Republican politics for president. It's almost inevitable whoever's the next in line, that's who the Republicans tend to put forward. And Ronald Reagan said, 'No, we don't need the next in line. We need something very different.'"
Fifty-four of the state's 69 delegates are up for direct election in Illinois Tuesday, with the remainder decided at the state GOP convention. Santorum failed to file slates in four congressional districts, so the maximum he could pick up is 44.
Gingrich, who says his plan would bring gasoline back down to $2.50 a gallon, posted a statement on his campaign Web site Monday attacking President Obama's energy policy. The Democratic president's "Top 5 Energy Whoppers," Gingrich said, are that oil companies are "drilling all over this country," misleadingly says the United States only has 2 percent of the world's proven oil reserves, that U.S. policy cannot affect world oil prices, that the oil industry receives $4 billion a year in federal subsidies, and that solar and wind energy are the solution to high prices.
"President Obama has blocked drilling in offshore areas totaling more than 10 times the size of Texas. He has stalled progress on an estimated one trillion barrels of oil in the American West, where the federal government owns the majority of the world's oil shale. These off-limits supplies alone give the United States some of the largest oil reserves in the world," Gingrich wrote.
"No one thinks the proven reserves numbers come anywhere close to capturing our oil resources -- even the U.S. government.
"President Obama and his allies have repeatedly suggested his policies can't be blamed for high gasoline prices because oil is 'bought and sold on the world market' over which he has no control. But prices on the 'world market' are determined primarily by supply and demand, and the president is blocking development of substantial oil supplies offshore and in the American West, which together are several times the known reserves of Saudi Arabia.
"The oil industry is not subsidized. It is subject to generic tax deductions that apply to all U.S. manufacturers. What the president proposes is specifically targeting oil companies for tax increases, not ending subsides that are given specifically to the oil industry.
"If 100 percent of American electricity today were generated by solar and wind technologies such as the president is pushing, it would have virtually no effect on the price of gasoline. Wind and solar are methods of generating electricity, which we use to power our buildings. Gasoline is the fuel for our cars. We barely use oil at all to generate electricity, meaning that converting everything to wind and solar would do nothing to decrease the consumption of oil."
Paul was to be in California Tuesday for an appearance on Jay Leno's late-night talk show.
