At a private fundraiser in Corpus Christi, Texas hosted by the Nueces County Republican Women, Cain told the group how his ’9-9-9' plan measured up against Texas Governor Rick Perry’s recent ‘Cut, Balance, and Grow’ plan.

Cain said, “Bottom line, Governor Perry’s flat tax lite is no competition for 9-9-9.”

“Every interview that I do now till the end of the week, they’re going to want to compare it to the 999 plan,” said Cain, who elaborated on the many differences between his plan and Perry’s plan.

“It’s not a true flat tax. It’s flat tax lite. The reason its flat tax lite is because he still retains some favorite deductions — which means the lobbyists are still going to work hard to get their favorite deduction put back in. So that defeats the purpose. Secondly, it doesn’t take out embedded taxes. The embedded taxes are still there. Why? Because the 20 percent flat personal tax and the 20 percent flat tax on businesses still causes business to pass those taxes onto consumers. So he didn’t remove embedded taxes.”

Cain joked about the popularity of his 9-9-9 plan saying, “When I’m walking through airports, TSA agents say hello Mr. Cain, 9-9-9! It’s my new last name.”

Cain then faulted Perry’s plan for not eliminating loopholes inherent in the current tax code.

“He just basically collapsed all of the tax brackets into one. That’s all it is. That’s why I call it flat tax lite,” he said.

“Here’s the other big difference. It doesn’t expand the base. As long as you’re only taxing income, the only way to raise revenue is to raise taxes. The reason he ends up with a 20 percent rate versus a 9 percent rate is because with 9-9-9 we expanded the base. We have income tax and we expanded the base by adding the national sales tax. And when you expand the base you can get the lowest rate possible for everybody,” Cain said.

Cain went on to talk about the virtues of his own economic recovery plan, saying his team strived to make it simple, transparent, efficient, fair, and revenue neutral.

“Someone said, well why nine? Well we tried eight and it wasn’t enough revenue. We tried 10 and it was too much revenue. Nine is the answer. It’s real simple,” he said.

Pulling out his own 9-9-9 pamphlet from his jacket pocket, Cain said, “This is it. We tried to make it more complicated but we couldn’t.”