Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) – a freshman member of the House Tea Party Caucus – said Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry’s new flat tax plan will jump-start his struggling campaign, The Hill reports.

“I was very excited to see him go with the flat tax,”Mulvaney said in an interview Thursday on MSNBC. “It’s very, very similar to what we’ve been talking about in terms of the Republican Study Committee, the conservative group within the House Republicans, and he went a little bit further than I think we’re going to go even. I was enthusiastic about somebody actually taking some bold steps.”

Perry’s plan calls for an alternative 20 percent flat tax, a privatized option for Social Security, and an increase in the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare. Taxpayers would still have a choice between keeping their current tax rates or taking the flat tax, and all standard deductions and tax credits would remain unchanged.

“I look specifically back home, to South Carolina, which is a fairly conservative state and an early primary state,” Mulvaney said. “Some really big names in South Carolina politics from the tea party all the way over to the establishment are sort of rallying to Mr. Perry now that he’s offered real ideas.”

The Hill also reports that Perry picked up the key endorsement of South Carolina state House Speaker Robert Harrell (R) on Tuesday, and that he met with Tea Party-backed Gov. Nikki Haley (R-S.C.). However, Haley is not expected to get behind any of the GOP candidates until sometime next year.