T-R PHOTO BY NICK BAUR Republican presidential candidate Perry Johnson spoke to the Marshall County Pachyderm Herd at Legends American Grill in Marshalltown on Friday and championed his “Two Cents to Save America” plan.

Marshalltown played host to its second candidate in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election as Republican businessman and author Perry Johnson spoke to voters at the weekly meeting of the Marshall County Pachyderm Herd about his longshot campaign for the nation’s highest office.

Having spent the majority of his life in the private sector, Johnson is the founder of a series of quality assurance companies and has written widely about the field.

A self-described “pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, anti-woke, anti-China” conservative, Johnson hails from the state of Michigan, where he unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2022 and was left off the Republican primary ballot after fraudulent and invalid petition signatures were discovered.

But on Friday in Marshalltown, Johnson stressed his new presidential plan, which shares a title with his most recent book: Two Cents to Save America.

Johnson explained that in order to save Social Security and Medicare whilst tapering down inflation and securing the U.S/Mexico border, he believes the federal government needs to reduce its discretionary spending by two percent each year.

“We have to have a message that’s clear. Mine is clear. I think the government needs to go on a diet, a two cent diet. We’re going to cut two cents out of every dollar of discretionary spending,” Johnson said. “We’re going to stop this reckless inflation. That is my theme. It’s a central theme, and I’m focusing on that.”

Examples of discretionary spending in the federal government include national defense, foreign aid, education and transportation, and during his stump speech in Marshalltown, he floated the possibility of axing the Department of Education entirely and finishing former president Donald Trump’s border wall should he be elected.

“I’ve spent my whole life bringing quality and efficiency to companies. That’s what I do as a profession,” Johnson said. “Why not have somebody that spent their entire life bringing quality and efficiency to companies be the guy to actually bring it to the government?”

A supporter of Trump during both of his previous campaigns for president, Johnson tried to set himself apart from the current GOP frontrunner by saying he’s more focused on talking about resolutions to problems rather than the problems themselves.

“I don’t spend my time talking about all the problems we have,” Johnson said. “I talk about the solutions. I don’t think anyone else is doing that.”

Though a litany of Republican candidates have campaigned on shrinking the federal government in the past, Johnson indicated he is uniquely equipped for the task.

“Most of the people campaigning on it aren’t used to doing this kind of thing. I spent my whole life doing this kind of thing for companies all over. That’s all I’ve done for 35 years,” Johnson said. “It’s pretty hard to ask somebody who might be, let’s say, an excellent attorney, to go in and do surgery on the brain, and nor would you want them doing heart surgery.”

Johnson took third in straw poll in March for presidential picks as part of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), one of the largest and most influential gatherings of conservatives in the country, drawing in nearly five percent of the vote but polling well behind the two leading candidates, Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Yet, Johnson said he still believes his platform of reducing federal spending will resonate with a large number of Americans.

“My message is two cents to save America,” Johnson said. “I believe that I could push that to independence all the way through. Because I do believe that you have a huge portion of America that realizes we’re in serious trouble. We spent too much money.”