On multiple instances over the last several months, Rudy Giuliani has demonstrated a lack of knowledge about foreign policy, national security, domestic policy, and constitutional law.
But once in a while, the former mayor appears so confused, one really has to wonder why he’s even running for president.
Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said Friday that the alternative minimum tax — which is expected to generate as much as $1 trillion over the next 10 years — could be eliminated over the long term by balancing it out with even more tax cuts.
Giuliani’s remarks prompted a bewildered response from his audience of technology executives. Both Republicans and Democrats said they assumed that the candidate must have misspoke as he responded to a question about the tax and its affect the middle class.
This would almost be comical if it weren’t serious. The AMT was created to prevent a handful of wealthy taxpayers from exploiting loopholes and not paying income taxes. It was not, however, indexed for inflation, which means the AMT is poised to hurt the middle-class. Everyone says they want to fix the AMT, but it’s expensive — costing up to $100 billion in 2010 alone.
Yesterday, demonstrating the kind of policy expertise that makes his presidency a scary prospect, Giuliani said he would cap, and eventually eliminate, the AMT. “Over time we can figure out how to eliminate it…. If we were going to eliminate it, though, we’d have to balance it with additional tax cuts,” Giuliani said, leaving confused expressions on his audience. “That might be by making the Bush tax cuts permanent.”
This reflects the sophistication of a small child who picked up a copy of the Weekly Standard, and hoped to make sense of what he didn’t understand. Eliminating the AMT would cost billions. Additional tax cuts would cost billions more. Trying to strike a “balance” this way is like trying to put out a fire with kerosene.
OK, so Giuliani flubbed a question. He got confused, doesn’t know much about tax policy, and said something that doesn’t make sense. It happens. His campaign can clarify what he meant to say and move on.
Except, therein lies the rub: the Team Giuliani insists the former mayor didn’t misspeak at all.
[A] Giuliani spokeswoman said later that Giuliani meant what he said — tax cuts could replace the lost revenue from the AMT by boosting the overall economy.
“Giuliani is the quintessential supply-sider,” said spokeswoman Maria Comella.
I’m sorry, but this is just dumb. These aren’t the words of someone who should be taken seriously by anyone.
As Kevin put it, we’re talking about a “buffoon.”
Sure, he misspoke, but he misspoke because he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about and blurted out the first thing that came to mind: namely that reducing taxes is the answer to every question. Nobody with even the vaguest idea of what it meant to eliminate the AMT would say that it had to be balanced by reducing other taxes.
Remember when George Bush wasn’t able to name the president of Pakistan back in the 2000 campaign? Everyone laughed it off. But this isn’t a game of gotcha. Nobody forces Rudy to say this stuff. He just flatly doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s a buffoon. It’s time for the press corps to take notice and quit giving him a pass.
It’s kind of funny to consider just how frequently this comes up when discussing Giuliani. In just the last few hours, Giuliani and his campaign have said:
* Tax cuts + tax cuts = Balance.
* No one should talk about his scandalous personal life.
* 9/11 led him to change his position on gun control.
* Criticism of military officers should not be “allowed.”
Ladies and gentlemen, your Republican frontrunner.