Financial Times FT.com

My four pillars of American prosperity

By Rudy Giuliani

Published: April 11 2007 03:00 | Last updated: April 11 2007 03:00

Washington needs a hefty dose of fiscal discipline. To restore accountable and effective leadership to America, government needs to run more like a business.

That is what I did in New York. My administration inherited a $2.3bn deficit. We responded by imposing fiscal discipline. We cut programmes. We cut taxes. And we got results. We turned the deficit into a multibillion-dollar surplus. We cut bureaucracy by 20,000 workers - while increasing cops on the street and teachers in the classroom. And we cut taxes 23 times, all while working with a Democrat-dominated city council. Every year - in good times or bad - I required city commissioners to propose cuts in their own budgets. I wanted to keep my managers focused on saving taxpayers' money, while spending it more effectively. We put management back into the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

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