Below are remarks and positions of Rudy Giuliani, former candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. Mayor Giuliani has described himself as a moderate Republican.

An August 2006 poll from Rasmussen Reports showed that the American public perceives Giuliani overall to be a moderate. Specifically, of those Americans polled, 36% classified him as a moderate, 29% as a conservative, and 15% as a liberal, with the remaining 20% being unsure. On The Issues, a non-partisan organization that records politicians' stances, considers Giuliani to be a "Libertarian Conservative."

Giuliani was originally a Democrat, and supported both John F. KennedyInside Washington: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Rudy Giuliani – U.S. News & World Report and George McGovernRudy Giuliani, Disciplinarian Weekly Standard, Nov. 26, 2007 in their presidential bids. He switched to the Republican Party in 1980 after a five-year stint as an Independent.

Conservative political pundit George Will wrote that at the end of Giuliani's time as mayor he had run the most conservative government in America in the last 50 or 60 years.

Economic policy

Taxation Giuliani has said that he cut taxes 23 times as mayor of New York City. However, the city's Independent Budget Office has pointed out that seven of these tax cuts were state initiatives, and that Giuliani had actually opposed the largest cut which was due to come with the expiration of a 12½-percent surcharge on the city's personal income tax. Giuliani supported President Bush's tax cuts.

In 1994, he endorsed Democratic incumbent Governor Mario Cuomo over Republican challenger George Pataki due to Pataki's proposals to cut the commuter tax. Giuliani also objected to Pataki's plan to cut income taxes by 25%. The commuter tax was a 0.45% tax paid by those who lived outside NYC but who commuted to jobs within it. Giuliani was strictly against cutting this tax, calling it "relatively modest and completely justified."

Giuliani has not signed a pledge by Americans for Tax Reform (signed by every Republican presidential nominee since 1988) to not raise taxes while in office.

In 1996, Giuliani criticized a proposal by presidential candidate Steve Forbes for a national flat tax, saying its elimination of deductions for state and local income taxes would unfairly punish high-tax states such as New York and added that the flat tax "would really be a disaster."

By 2007, Giuliani was more amenable to a flat tax, but still claimed difficulties in adopting one. In an interview, he said: "If we were doing income tax for the first time. In other words, if we were starting off new back at the beginning of the last century, then probably we should go with a – we probably should've gone with a flat tax, maybe two levels of tax, but really simple. Our economy has kind of grown up now on depreciation and deductions and industries have grown up around that and so I don't know exactly how much you can simplify it, but you sure have to make a stab at it.""CNBC's LARRY KUDLOW INTERVIEWS FORMER NEW YORK MAYOR AND PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE RUDY GIULIANI ON KUDLOW & COMPANY", CNBC, March 26, 2007. Accessed March 29, 2007. Later that week, in accepting Forbes' endorsement of his own presidential candidacy, Giuliani said that "a flat tax would make a lot of sense".

During the May 3, 2007, Republican Presidential debate when asked what tax would he like to cut, Giuliani responded:

We have to adjust the AMT. That has to be reduced. We have to get rid of the death tax, which is going to go to zero in 2010, which is going to create an incentive – I can't imagine what kind of an incentive it's going to create. It's going to go to zero in 2010. And then in 2011, it's going to go to 55 percent. And we have to make sure that the tax cuts that went into effect, that that level remains. Otherwise, we're going to have one of the biggest tax increases in history in 2011. And I would look to try to regularize the rates and look for some marginal reduction, even beyond what we're doing right now.

With regard to Social Security, Giuliani has expressed his opposition to a tax increase but has declined to rule it out.

Health care In 2000 Giuliani initiated what the New York Post called "a massive program" to get city employees to expand the number of low-income, uninsured children and adults into public health entitlement programs such as Medicaid, Child Health Plus and Family Health Plan. Promoting enrollment in his HealthStat program, Giuliani said at the time that the program could be "a model for the rest of this country for how to get people covered on the available health programs.""New Rudy vs. Old on Kid Health," New York Post, October 15, 2007, p. 8.

On February 26, 2007, Giuliani said that he was against any notion of universal health care in America, which would mean a "socialization" of American medicine. "That would be a terrible, terrible mistake. [Solutions] have to be free market solutions. They have to be a competitive system." Giuliani did say that it is an appropriate role for the government to "find ways" to expand access to health insurance.Russell Berman, "Giuliani: 'Party of Freedom' Will Define Republicans", The New York Sun, February 27, 2007. Accessed March 20, 2007.

On July 29, 2007, Giuliani announced his five key health care advisors: Daniel P. Kessler, Scott W. Atlas, David G. Gratzer, Sally C. Pipes, and Donald W. Moran.

On July 31, 2007, Giuliani unveiled his health care plan which proposed a tax deduction (not a tax credit) of up to $15,000 for families and up to $7,500 for individuals who purchase private individual health insurance policies.

Giuliani wrote an August 3, 2007 article for The Boston Globe on his official position on health care. In it he stated that taxes should not be raised to provide more health care but instead lowered for "individual empowerment". He talked about the creation of a tax-free Health Savings Account that would allow individuals and small businesses to stock up on health insurance and in effect lower rates. "America is best when we solve our problems from our strengths, not our weaknesses. Healthcare reform must be based on increased choice, affordability, portability, and individual empowerment." (Giuliani)

In October 2007, he supported President Bush's veto of the augmented State Children's Health Insurance Program.New Rudy vs. Old on Kid Health New York Post, October 15, 2007, p. 8. Giuliani's support of the S-CHIP veto elicited criticism from his past supporters on health issues: Sandy Trujillo, deputy director of the Children's Defense Fund said, "I'm quite shocked because Giuliani was a champion of the Children's Health Insurance Program. He's re-writing his own history."

Government spending

Stadiums Giuliani was a supporter of public financing for sports stadiums and arenas as mayor of New York, including $194 million in the budget for sports arenas for 2001. Days before leaving office in December 2001, he announced "tentative agreements" for both the New York Yankees and New York Mets to build a $1 billion stadium. Of $1.6 billion sought for the stadiums, city and state expenditure would pick up half the tab for construction, $800 million, along with $390 million on extra transportation. The plan also called for forgiving $80,000 that the Mets owed the city in cable revenues and giving both teams an additional $25 million in planning money. The plan also said that the teams would be allowed to keep all parking revenues, which state officials had already said they wanted to keep to compensate the state for building new garages for the teams. The teams would keep 96% of ticket revenues and 100% of all other revenues, not pay sales tax or property tax on the stadiums, and would get low-cost electricity from New York state.

During his eight years as mayor, Giuliani was a constant advocate of publicly funded stadiums. Giuliani had already been instrumental in the construction of taxpayer-funded minor league baseball facilities KeySpan Park for the Mets' minor league Brooklyn Cyclones and Richmond County Bank Ballpark for the Staten Island Yankees. The dual $1 billion plans had also been put forth unsuccessfully by Giuliani in 1996. Giuliani faced questions about how to finance these stadiums, while the city struggled to balance the budget. Recently built stadiums in Baltimore and Cleveland had cost one-third to one-fourth the $1 billion set aside for the proposed New York stadiums; the $1 billion stadiums were to be the most expensive in American history. His 1998 plan to relocate the Yankees to the west side of Manhattan had been met with strong opposition; at that time, $3 million in city money was given to the Yankees for site planning. Six city officials were sent on a city trip to explore stadiums in Baltimore, Denver and other cities.

Foreign policy In September 2007, the influential journal Foreign Affairs published a major exposition of Giuliani's views on foreign policy.

Iran

Giuliani believes that the leaders of Iran have objectives that are similar to those of al-Qaeda. In a New York Times interview he said, "[al-Qaeda's] movement has already displayed more aggressive tendencies by coming here and killing us," and asserted that Iran has "a similar objective in their anger at the modern world".

In his Foreign Affairs article, Giuliani stated that he regards the Islamic Republic of Iran as a nation which "has been determined to attack the international system throughout its entire existence" and has "supported terrorism and murder". He accused the Iranian government of "hiding behind the principle of sovereignty to stave off the consequences of its actions". Consequently, he feels that talks with Iran should only be approached from a position of strength. In his view: "The theocrats ruling Iran need to understand that we can wield the stick as well as the carrot, by undermining popular support for their regime, damaging the Iranian economy, weakening Iran's military, and, should all else fail, destroying its nuclear infrastructure."

During the May 3, 2007, Republican Presidential debate, Giuliani said: He [Ahmadinejad] has to understand it's not an option; he cannot have nuclear weapons.Giuliani on Iran FCNL.org

In the following June 5, 2007 debate, in answer to a hypothetical question about whether the use of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons should be considered to keep Iran from gaining its own nuclear weapons, Giuliani said that "I think it could be done with conventional weapons, but you can't rule out anything and you shouldn't take any option off the table."

In September 2007, Giuliani stated that the United States and allies would do everything necessary to prevent Iran from going nuclear stating the "absolute assurance that we will – if they get to the point where they are going to become a nuclear power – we will prevent them or we'll set them back five or 10 years. And that is not said as a threat. That should be said as a promise."

War in Afghanistan Giuliani is a supporter of the War in Afghanistan considering that the war was a response to the September 11 attacks and opposes any time table for U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Iraq War Giuliani was a supporter of the Iraq War, later in 2007 Giuliani was described by Newsweek magazine in January 2007 as "one of the most consistent cheerleaders for the president's handling of the war in Iraq." Later that year he also supported Bush's surge in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Domestic surveillance Giuliani has supported Bush's tactic of using domestic surveillance. He stated that "... we have to remain a country that has the Patriot Act, a country that has electronic surveillance to use to find out about these plots that may be being planned."

Israel