Steve Forbes Endorses Giuliani

Wednesday, March 28th 2007, 10:22 pm

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) _ Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani gained the endorsement Wednesday of a former GOP candidate _ billionaire publisher and flat-tax proponent Steve Forbes.

Forbes ran for the White House in 1996 and 2000 as a Republican pushing a flat income tax rate.

The CEO of Forbes Inc., said Wednesday that Giuliani's record as mayor of New York City ``showed how exercising fiscal discipline, including tax cuts, lowers deficits, spurs economic growth, and increases revenue.''

Giuliani, a front-runner among Republicans seeking the White House in 2008, said he and Forbes share ``an economic vision that embraces supply-side economics, tax relief, and spending restraint.''

Back in 1996 when he was mayor, Giuliani dismissed Forbes' notion of a flat-tax as a ``mistake,'' saying ``the flat tax is not for me'' because it would give states and cities more authority but less resources.

The pair also attended the opening bell ceremony at the NASDAQ stock exchange.

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WASHINGTON (AP) _ Ending the Iraq war dominated the talk among presidential candidates during a labor union forum Wednesday.

``It is time for us to bring the war to a close,'' Democrat Barack Obama told the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO. ``We had a vote yesterday; for the first time, a majority of the Senate said, `We have a deadline. It's time to bring them home.'''

During debate over an Iraq spending bill on Tuesday, the Democratic-controlled Senate narrowly supported withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by next March.

The Illinois senator and other candidates got standing ovations from the labor group when they mentioned the war.

``We have lots of members that have sons and daughters over there that are coming back injured, and coming back without feet and arms and legs,'' said Edward Sullivan, president of the building and construction trades alliance. ``They should be home. Enough is enough.''

Earlier in the day, the group booed House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, when he suggested that if U.S. troops withdraw, terrorists will follow to confront them in America.

The alliance is an umbrella group of nearly a dozen unions representing about 2 million workers. Sullivan said his member unions will try to agree on one candidate before making an endorsement.

``I'd like to see us without coming out of here all bloody for one candidate or another to support the one that we think will do the best for our country,'' he said. ``We're going to try and hold our people till then, until we have a pretty resounding idea of who it's going to be and make our choice.''

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LAS VEGAS (AP) _ Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani stood by embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Wednesday, saying the Bush administration appears to have done nothing wrong in firing eight U.S. attorneys.

``I don't think the information that's already out makes it clear anything but the president exercised his discretion to remove people that serve at his pleasure,'' said Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and a former U.S. attorney.

Campaigning in Las Vegas, Giuliani repeated comments that Gonzales should ``be given the benefit of the doubt'' and the chance to explain the firings, which included the ouster of the U.S. attorney for Nevada, Daniel Bogden.

Giuliani said if the firings turned out to be connected to the prosecutors' investigations, ``that would be another matter.''