Here's a snippet from my interview last night with the GOP presidential candidate on the subject of taxes and the war on prosperity. KUDLOW: How do you like it that Congress seems to be singling out a New York fund, New York buyout fund, Steve Schwarzman's Blackstone, on the eve of an IPO, and they're saying, `We're going to double your tax rate.' What's your thought on the Blackstone tax?
GIULIANI: Well, you know, the single biggest contributor to New York City’s surplus every year was the Wall Street bonuses.
KUDLOW: Right.
GIULIANI: Wall Street had big bonuses, New York City had big surpluses. Wall Street had a bad year, New York City was struggling. This is our biggest industry, the finance industry. So it would seem to me, like steel used to be to Pittsburgh...
KUDLOW: Right. Corn in Iowa. This would be like an Iowa senator asking for a higher tax on corn.
GIULIANI: Yeah. Or, you know, don't do much about ethanol if you're from the Midwest and you got a lot of farms.
KUDLOW: But wait, this isn't all. Senator Hillary Clinton then says in her speech, `US corporations are not paying their fair share.' And then she says that's it's very important--let me get this right, `It is irresponsible tax breaks for upper income people must expire.' Now, I want to know, what's your view on that? And is there now, in the Democratic Party, a war on prosperity going on?
GIULIANI: No question about it. This is the same senator who, a few years ago said, `We have to take things from you for the common good.' Well...
KUDLOW: What does that mean? What does that mean?
GIULIANI: I think that means--I think that means that she and the government can figure it out better than you and I can.
KUDLOW: Oh.
GIULIANI: I usually tell people my general philosophy is I'm going to give a few things back to you for the common good, because you're probably going to spend it more intelligently. You're going to spend it in a wiser way. You're going to create more jobs.
And I think that this will be a very stark, dramatic difference, particularly if I'm the Republican nominee, between my philosophy and theirs and my history and theirs. [My history] has been a history of lowering taxes and seeing the results of that work to taking on an economy that was anemic--New York--and make it into a robust economy. I did it by lowering taxes, not by that--whatever you call those policies.
