Leave it to Rudy Giuliani, the self-anointed saint of 9/11, to take campaign pandering to an informative level. Yesterday in Manchester, Giuliani unveiled his tax proposal which is in reality the political equivalent of "free breakfast, lunch and dinner for all." According to press reports, Saint Rudy promised to slash taxes and accused the Dems of having plans to raise $3 trillion in taxes. In other words, the tax and spend worshipping Democratic wolves are ready to knock down your door and empty your bank account. Rudy attacked Hillary Clinton for seeking a "common good" (through more and more government paid by more and bigger taxes) while the altruistic Republicans "believe in people."
Kathleen Strand, Clinton’s NH spokesperson didn’t wait long to respond to Rudy’s “believe in people” babble. "If he's attacking Senator Clinton for wanting to change President Bush's economic policies and his Iraq policy, he's right. She will," she said.
What Rudy might believe is that people are suckers by offering then a free pass to financial insanity. With most policies, the devil is in the details but Rudy makes it easy for the "people" by not bothering with any hint of details nor any logic beyond playing to the GOP base by promising them more of the same.
Rudy accuses Dems being silent co-conspirators with "Islamic fascists" (because they don't subscribe to his campaign rhetoric) and promises to stay on the terrorist offensive but offers no plan or vision except more of the same: and does he subscribe to $400 billion or more of deficit spending every year just to pay for staying on the offensive. Perhaps we should tax the Iraqi people or the rest of the world to pay the bill.
Rudy promises health care reform through the tax code and embracing a free-market approach to save the day. Of course how will Rudy pay for this trillion-dollar tax break that most health care experts believe is a massive boondoggle? He doesn’t say.
Ah, tax cuts. He promises to slash taxes, make permanent Bush’s tax cuts for those who don’t need it, and eliminate the inheritance tax. And how to balance the books? One solution, according to Michael Boskin, one of Ronald Reagan’s economic advisors who no advises is enhance “efficiency” (my favorite non-answer answer) to cut the Federal workforce by 25 percent to save…$21 billion annually. Or about two months worth of spending in the Iraq war. Of course, Boskin is an authority on…running up the largest federal budget deficits in history until the Bush gang took over.
To paraphrase Reagan (who said of the Soviet Union), when it comes to Rudy, don’t trust until you really verify the details that aren’t there.
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