Rudy Giuliani in U.S. News and World Report

On Corporations: Low corporate tax rates encourage business locating in US

A: Suppose you're planning now where to put your business, in the United States or in France [where corporate taxes are low], and you've got a presidential race going on in the US and one side that could win that race is saying, "We are going to raise taxes by $3 trillion"--which is what the ultimate number would be--or they look at rates more, "We're going to raise the rate from 35% to 39.6%" or, "We're going to raise capital gains from 15% to 20%," or one of them says from 15% to 28% & he's reading [French President Nicolas] Sarkozy's book, Testimony, and he hears Sarkozy saying, "I'm going to reduce rates." Sarkozy wants to reduce the corporate rate even though it's already lower than the US Only Japan has a higher one. So if you're making choices like that now and it takes you 2 or 3 years to build your factory or it takes 2 or 3 years to build your office building, I have to imagine if we're not losing business already, we're starting to.

On Social Security: Trust me on Social Security reform, but no details yet

Q: What's your plan to deal with Social Security?

A: Social Security is something we can straighten out if I get elected. We should put together 5 Democratic & 5 Republican senators and tell them, "Give me 2 or 3 options, and then we'll negotiate it out." And I should tell you my style of working with a legislature. I always proposed more tax cuts than I got, and I always proposed a multiple-choice list of tax cuts because I was willing to deal with a Democratic legislature and Democratic City Council. If you don't want to lower the one I want to lower, maybe there is one you want to lower, and we can make a deal.

On Tax Reform: Letting Bush tax cuts expire means economy would decline

A: The economy begins to go in decline. I think we see an outsourcing of jobs. We see a loss of revenue. I think we see it before then. I think we start seeing it in 2008, 2009. I did a forum on taxes, and a guy who runs a medium-size business was saying he's already starting to hedge his bets against the idea of a major tax increase in 2010. I mean, how many businesses plan three, four, five years ahead