DURHAM, N.H. (AP) – After a week spent tangling with his Republican rivals over taxes, illegal immigration and government spending, presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani was back to criticizing Democrats on Saturday.
At a town hall meeting at the University of New Hampshire, he avoided singling out anyone by name, instead lumping all the Democrats together.
“The minute you go in the direction in the kind of tax plan (the Democrats) have, which is to raise taxes by 20 or 30 percent, the minute you want to grow government agencies, the minute you want to move toward socialized medicine or take big steps in that direction, what you’re doing is leveling things off for people,” said Giuliani.
The former New York mayor said his economic policies would reward success and would create “a society where you can look up to the sky and there can be a chance for you to have success.”
Democrats, he said, would rather penalize success.
“You know that looking up the sky I was talking about? It’s like putting a lid on it you can’t look up to the sky anymore,” he said.
America’s economic future is particularly important for young people, said Giuliani, acknowledging the handful of university students in the audience.
“You want to graduate into a growing economy and you’re entitled to that,” said Giuliani. “You’re entitled to it in the same way I was entitled to it and our parents were and grandparents.”
By lowering the corporate tax, eliminating the estate tax, reducing government regulation and spending, and limiting what he called frivolous regulation, Giuliani said businesses would have more money to invest in the economy and to foster job growth. He continually referenced changes proposed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy that aim to encourage hard work and economic expansion in France.
When asked by an audience member where Giuliani saw the potential for growth in domestic jobs, the former mayor said there should be more investment in alternative energy technology.
“Energy independence is a great thing we can sell to the rest of the world,” said Giuliani. “If we invest in energy independence, it not only will help us, (but) we could sell energy to China and to India and to the developing world.”
By exporting energy, as well as other services like, banking, finance and health care, American can begin to have a more balanced trade economy, he said.
Earlier in the day, Giuiliani won the endorsement of the New Hampshire Troopers Assocation. The group’s president, Louis Capponi, said selecting Giuliani was an easy decision given his record in New York.
AP-ES-12-01-07 1914EST
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