governor mary fallen of oklahoma and paul lepage, from maine. want you to listen to governor chris christie, who set the table for tax cuts, subpoenaing and the need to say no. >> we start off with the answer being no until we get in the right fiscal condition and then we can say yes to the right things, to cutting taxes, to lowering regulation. to empowering the people of our state and our country. to be optimistic again. >> i'm here at the new york historical society at the bush institute conference. and i'm sitting with governor mary fallen of oklahoma and paul lepage of maine. we appreciate your time very much. can i get a quick take? rick santorum has suspended his campaign. what's your take? >> senator santorum is a great guy, and he helped the debate about why it's important to go back to the principles that made this nation great. spending, reform, and standing up for constitutional principles. standing for life. all things he talked about on the campaign trail. how do we create a better business environment in our nation, and he added s

governor lepage. let me ask you about that. how do you handle the business tax, corporate tax question. some states -- will pony up -- subsidies and tax credits. targeted businesses who, you know -- orchestrate beautiful campaigns and make a lot of promise as ts about jobs. many promises never pan out. it is taxpayer money. mom and pop shop doesn't get a tax subsidy. but the big -- you know, fortune 500 international globalization, whatever, do. or would it be better to just lower the corporate tax rate for everybody? >> i believe that corporate tax rate has to come down. you are lowering the tax. >> kind of a loaded question. sorry. >> you go from the largest tax rate in the world -- and if you lowered it. i believe canada is a good example of what happened in the last two decades. in their -- they're bringing down their business tax. i frankly am not a big fan of subsidies. because you have local, state, federal, i shy away from the federal as much as i can. i try not to talk any of their money. because every time i take thei

governor lepage if you would begin, describe briefly for the group and for me, your tax reform in the great state of maine. >> our tax reform goal is basically -- about a $400 million tax cut last year. we took the lowest tax rate for the poor which is basically the 2% rate. and we reduced the 8.5% rate down to 7.9%. to show, some are symbolic. really telling maine people that we were going to lower taxes. then we went in and lopered taxes on businesses. we initiated new tax credits. made some major reforms on the spending side to pay for it in our pension reform, reformed our pension. we had a $4.5 billion short fall. we cut that 45%. the we -- did a new health care package so that we can go to free market health care. that could compete against obamacare. >> free market health care, letting consumers choose? >> letting consumers choose. >> does president obama know that? has he weighed in on that? >> not yet. >> i hope heap is nicer to you than he is to my friend, paul ryan. who will be a speaker here later on. >> basically we took some -- some taxes off, certain types of -- like ai

as governor lepage said, it's not fair, you're only helping rich people at $19,000 and change, whatever it was. and, number two, you're pushing grannies off the cliff instead of helping -- cutting all their health care services and education services. so you're destroying them because you stop their government subsidies and are helping rich people. that has been for a long time the two -- i think the two key options to tax reform. >> we destroyed that argument in oklahoma with our tax reform and reduction plan in that in our state we actually taxed -- if you made $1 to $1,000, our bottom income tax level kicked in at half a percent. we tax those who are poor in our state. what i'm proposing and i'm a republican, i'm proposing that on couples that make zero to $30,000, they pay no income tax. >> that's what we're doing. >> same thing. >> yes, we're moving it up to $30,000. >> what's the benefit of that? you see that as a fairness issue? >> we're trying to help the middle class. we're trying to help those that are the working poor in our state and, by the way, for anybody like a warren bu