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I was the governor that drew a tough, tough straw. I was governor during the worst recession since the 1930s, and I had to cut $5 billion from the state budget.

I am a governor who left office with a smaller general fund budget than when we started.

I have a record as governor. I have a record of cutting spending. And I talked yesterday not only about we ought to cut spending, I talked about how we've cut spending in Mississippi and how if you did the same things in the federal government, you would save tens of billions of dollars a year.

My tax cut would cut hundreds of billions of dollars. So to do it, you have to be willing to cut spending, too. But if you were to cut hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes, that money's left in communities.

When I became mayor of New York City, I had a $2.4 billion deficit. And everybody wanted me to raise taxes. I said, 'If I raise taxes, I'll drive people out of New York City, and then I'll be raising taxes again.' So what I did was I cut expenses by 15 percent.

When I was elected Governor, we had an audacious agenda that naysayers said couldn't be enacted with a Democrat majority in the state legislature. However, we worked across party lines and enacted historic reforms. Working together, we cut taxes by more than $600 million.

I came to Congress to help reduce spending.

I've made more cuts than any governor has ever made.

And the cornerstone of my economic policies, when I first got elected, was cutting taxes on everybody on who paid taxes.

I've actually cut my personal pay individually; we didn't vote on that, but I've done that individually. It's important that folks know that we're going to roll up our sleeves and work on things, and members of Congress are going to sacrifice our own budgets first.