GOP Front-Runners in Attack Mode on Taxes and Spending
Romney chastises Giuliani for fighting line-item veto, supporting commuter tax.
Oct. 4, 2007 — -- In a further sign of how intense the race for the GOP presidential nomination is becoming, the two Republican front-runners attacked one another today on issues near and dear to Republican primary voters — taxes and spending.
Five days before a CNBC debate focused on economic issues, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney took to the stump in New Hampshire to attack former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani as tax-friendly.
Within minutes, Giuliani's campaign arranged a conference call with one of Romney's predecessors, former Massachusetts Gov. Paul Cellucci, who eagerly lambasted Romney for "desperation" and "hypocrisy" and "weak arguments from a governor who in four years really had no tax cuts for the people of Massachusetts."
The back and forth began this morning at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. Romney, from a neighboring state, leads in polls in the first-in-the-nation primary state, though Giuliani is quickly gaining ground.
Giuliani, who has a history of holding liberal views on social issues such as abortion, gay rights and guns, is hoping that his record as a conservative on economic and national security issues — not to mention the argument that only he can defeat Democratic front-runner New York Sen. Hillary Clinton — will carry the day. Romney's attack indicates that Giuliani's rivals do not intend to let him make his pitch on his terms.
"I don't think there's any tool more important than the line-item veto," Romney said when asked to contrast his record on taxes and spending with Giuliani's.
The line-item veto allows executives to veto individual items in spending bills without killing the entire bill. Many states give their governors line-item veto power, but the president does not have it — a federal judge ruled in 1998 that the Line Item Veto Act, one of the items in the Contract With America, was unconstitutional.
Romney noted that as mayor in 1997, Giuliani filed a lawsuit to challenge the constitutionality of the line-item veto, saying it improperly shifted congressional powers of taxation and appropriations to the executive branch. Giuliani said at the time he was worried his city's residents might be deprived of millions in health-care funding.
