Excerpts of an Interview with Peter Cook of Bloomberg

Mayor Giuliani On His Commitment To Simplify The Tax Code

"[T]he commitment is to keep the tax rates low, and if we can get them lower, to do that, and we're going to go into more detail about that probably in the next three or four weeks. …. We have to do what Ronald Reagan did. Ronald Reagan in the 1980s did a good job of simplifying our tax code. … I was successful doing exactly the same thing in New York City. … I did 23 tax reductions, lowered taxes by over $9 billion dollars. … So this is something I've done in the past, it's something Ronald Reagan did successfully, something President Kennedy did successfully, something President Bush has done successfully, and not gotten credit for. And we would continue it and build on it."

Mayor Giuliani On His Commitment To Energy Independence

"I have another commitment on energy independence. Energy independence, if we can make that a major focus of American policy for the next five to ten years, there's a great industry for us to sell to China and India. They need energy independence, we should be able to figure out how to produce it and then we can sell it to them and yes we can buy things from them. But if we can figure out these industries we can sell to them or processes we can sell to them, it'll benefit us and it'll benefit them and it will be one of the great ways in which we grow.

""I am a free market Republican, I am against subsidies in most cases, but I also realize … [energy independence] has gotten beyond even just the economy and it's gotten beyond globalization. It's a national security problem now, a national security issue that America be energy independent. And I would do everything I could to stimulate the private sector to do this, but where it couldn't, I would take them the extra way. We have to be energy independent, no ifs, no ands, no buts. And we need someone as president, like me, who can gets things done and doesn't just talk about things."

Mayor Giuliani On His Commitment To Embracing Globalization

"Globalization is one of the best things for our future. It's something we have to embrace like when I first wrote those 12 Commitments, I think I used the term embrace globalization. … This is great news for America, that people are coming out of poverty in China and in India. And really it's the difference between a Republican president who's an optimist, and a Democratic president, who's got his head in the sand and wants to just protect our prior inefficiencies. … For a country like ours — that's an optimistic, entrepreneurial country, we should be cheering globalization, this is a great thing for America. And we've got to take advantage of it and we need leaders who can show us how to take advantage of it."

"You need a Republican president who understands the free market, how to deal with it, how to find new jobs for us. … Looking in the rearview mirror is not the way to help American workers, it's looking forward. What are the new jobs you can do? How can we train them? What are the new industries? What are things that we can sell to this emerging market? America, … when it gets into this protectionism thing, we really decline."