Posted on 02/09/2007 8:22:33 AM PST by BunnySlippers
Rudy Giuliani: Supply-Sider-in-Chief
Republican primary voters should rally around the GOP field's most accomplished supply-sider, the all-but-announced Rudolph W. Giuliani. Having sliced taxes and slashed Gotham's government, New York's former mayor is the leading fiscal conservative among 2008's GOP presidential contenders.
Before Giuliani's January 1, 1994 inauguration, New York's economy was on a stretcher. Amid soaring unemployment, 235 jobs vanished daily. Financier Felix Rohatyn complained: "Virtually all human activities are taxed to the hilt." Punitive taxes helped fuel a $2.3 billion deficit.
Mayor-elect Giuliani sounded Reaganesque when he announced he would "reduce the size and cost of city government" to balance the budget. In his first State of the City address, he said: "We're going to cut taxes to attract jobs so our people can work."
Giuliani spent eight years keeping these promises.
"America's Mayor" cut or killed 23 levies, saving taxpayers $9.8 billion. Giuliani pared Gotham's top income-tax rate by 20.6%. Washington, D.C.'s CFO reported that between 1993 and 2001, local taxes on a family of four New Yorkers earning $50,000 fell 23.7%.
Giuliani cut the commercial-rent tax, curbed sales taxes, and curtailed the marriage penalty on taxpaying couples. Giuliani proudly shaved Gotham's hotel tax from 6% to 5 in 1994. Consequently, that tax's revenues soared from $135 million in Fiscal Year 1995 to $239 million in FY 2001.
Giuliani defends his supply-side instincts with bracing candor. Asked after September 11 if he would hike taxes, Giuliani called that "a dumb, stupid, idiotic, and moronic thing to do."
Giuliani's expenditure growth averaged 2.9% annually, while local inflation between January 1994 and December 2001 averaged 3.6%. His FY 1995 budget decreased outlays by 1.6%, while his post-9/11 FY 2002 plan lowered appropriations by 2.6%.
If President Bush had followed Giuliani's example and limited Washington's spending to 2.9% average, annual growth, the just-unveiled FY 2008 federal budget would cost $2.275 trillion, not $2.9 trillion, saving taxpayers $625 billion, the Cato Institute's Stephen Slivinski estimates. Such Giulianian fiscal discipline would generate a $386 billion surplus, not an anticipated $239 billion deficit.
Giuliani repeatedly privatized municipal assets. Giuliani sold WNYC radio for $20 million, WNYC-TV for $207 million, and Gotham’s share of the U.N. Plaza Hotel for $85 million. Divesting the New York Coliseum excised an eyesore from Columbus Circle and added $345 million to city coffers. Giuliani also let the private Central Park Conservancy manage Manhattan's fabled urban forest.
These eight years of tax reduction and fiscal responsibility helped hammer unemployment from 10.4 percent in 1993 to 5.7 percent in 2001. Simultaneously, personal income advanced 53 percent.
It's hard to compare a two-term ex-mayor, a one-term governor, and a four-term U.S. senator. Nevertheless, Cato's 2006 gubernatorial report card gives former Massachusetts chief executive Mitt Romney a "C." While the top personal tax rate fell 6 percent on his watch, thanks to a referendum voters approved before he arrived, Romney's first budget raised $140 million by closing corporate-tax loopholes. It also featured some $501.5 million in increased fees, including higher marriage licenses (from $4 to $50), pricier gun permits ($25 to $100), a $100 biannual fee for volunteer firefighters (rescinded under pressure), and a $10, previously free, ID card that lets the blind ride Boston public-transit gratis.
Few in Congress expose outrageous federal boondoggles as fervently as does John McCain. However, he is an ambivalent tax fighter. According to Club for Growth research, McCain opposed President Clinton's 1993 tax increases and supported his 1997 capital gains tax cuts. He also voted to extend President Bush's 2003 tax cuts. For 2005, McCain earned a 78% National Taxpayers Union rating -- an "A."
Unfortunately, McCain opposed President Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. McCain voted against repealing the Death Tax in 2002. Also, in 1998, McCain embraced former Sen. Tom Daschle's (D.-S.D.) motion to approve Big Tobacco's Master Settlement Agreement, including a $1.10-per-pack cigarette-tax increase.
"I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues," McCain conceded to Wall Street Journal editorialist Stephen Moore. "I still need to be educated."
Conservatives seeking a proven leader to lasso taxes and rein in runaway spending have a natural choice for President: Rudolph W. Giuliani.
Mr. Murdock, a New York-based commentator to HUMAN EVENTS, is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
LOL.
We had a LOT of new people sign up for the Rudy ping list yesterday, unlike the other candidate ping list which remain stagnant at best.
As fondly remembered as Giuliani is for responding to Sept. 11, however, most Americans don't know much else about him. Barely one in five Republicans knew that he supports abortion rights and civil unions for same-sex couples, the USA TODAY poll found. Nearly as many thought he was "pro-life" as said he was "pro-choice."
When they were told about his stance on those issues, his star dimmed. One in five Republicans said his views would "rule him out as a candidate" they could support. That included one-third of those who attend church every week, an important base of the GOP that makes up a third of party loyalists. Rudy Giuliani would seem to have all the credentials a candidate for president could want: A hero of 9/11, a crime-busting federal prosecutor, a two-term Republican mayor in an overwhelmingly Democratic city and one of the most admired politicians in the country. He's got a big problem, though. First, he has to be nominated by Republicans who don't yet know his views on social issues.
Have you noticed they don't ever read the article but post the same noise? How dumb do they think Freepers are when they act like this? Most Freepers are a lot more intelligent then these anti-Rudy types give them credit for as most Freepers are smart enough to make up their own minds on who to support and not be told who they will support or be called names.
It is amazing and lot of them come from the Freepers who were on Bush Ping List for years which tells you something right there.
There was an entire blog devoted to Say No To Rudy. They've completely changed their minds. And they're social conservatives! LOL
http://saynotorudy.org/
I do remember - in fairness - every now and then I bust a thread and go off myself.
So I have to practice what I preach,,
As an Independent and not Republican, I wouldn't expect for you to be voting for or against him in a "Repubican" primary.
Thanks! That is the blog that came to my mind first and I never bookmarked it to be able to go back.
Indeed, in one recent poll, majorities of Republicans who were informed of Giuliani’s views on social issues said that they were either minor issues or no issues at all; only 16% said that they wouldn't vote for him after being informed of these views.
In the online GOP Bloggers poll, Giuliani is consistently one of the few candidates to end up with a net positive acceptability rating. These internet denizens are well-informed, and overwhelmingly self-describe as conservative (78% self-describe as 7 or higher on a 10-scale of conservatism). If these people can support Rudy, anyone can.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/
In fact, an exit poll question from Pew in 2004 revealed that only 3% of voters named abortion as their top voting issue, 2% named religiosity, and 2% named gay marriage.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1780060/posts
I respect Hunter, but he's not even on the edge of the radar scope after 26 years in congress. All the Freepers screaming, "but he's gonna get a web site and that will turn things around!"
I checked out gohunter08.com and it's really lame. Half the links point to rightwingnew.com and don't even work... Not exactly national campaign material.
I know some of the candidates that are in the hunt right now are not perfect... but they're one heck of a lot better than eight years of Hillary or Obama. I don't us to 'teach ourselves another lesson' like we did in Nov'06 again.
Those days are over, Peach.
Nevermind limiting government, reforming the tax code, or being pro-American on trade and defense, nope, it's more important that evangelicals be pandered to, that GOP politicians need to be our Daddy and tell us we're going to Hell if we don't vote for them, and that Presidents should have the power to rule by decree and eliminate abortions and gay marriages overnight. And the 20,000+ gun laws that preceded Rudy and written or co-sponsored by Congress that Republicans such as Hunter, Brownback, etc did nothing to eliminate? Those were Rudy's fault too.
The failure of supporters of the social conservative candidates to look at the aggregate picture, whereas their objectives will be much more likely met under Giuliani than under any Democrat President, will be the GOP's downfall, as they scratch their heads and wonder why the large swath of voters, who are not the die-hard conservatives as FR thinks they are, didn't vote for them again as they didn't in the mid-terms.
He's still a gun-grabbing nutjob.
Great post. A lot of us could see this happening; it was a train wreck in the making.
Any Republican Congressman who can't figure out where the GOP went wrong doesn't deserve to be elected. Period.
You're right.
Did you see the polls which directly refute that Republicans don't know Rudy's social views?
I am one of those "Unappeasables". And here's one of my 'problems' (Rudy himself aside) - these endless Rudy threads are bordering on SPAM. That's why I posted that pic.
Every Rudy sighting is turning into a thread. Next we'll be seeing;
"FLASH - Rudy Spotted Using Mens' Room"AND the subject matter is ALWAYS the same nonsense:
And last but not least - but undoubtedly the most absurd..
Check out (search) some of the threads he has started on Rudy or he's posted to. Look real good at his comments. One is, "NOT ON MY WATCH".
I have to go. Have nice day.
Tx has open primaries.
THat's it. Pout and complain and whine so the democrat party can get the White House, too. Keep up the good work. But I, for one, do not want Mrs. Clinton as Commander in Chief so long as my boy is in the Army.
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