Rudy Giuliani wants to cut the non-defense federal workforce by 20%, and to cut non-defense spending. Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times reports:

Republican presidential hopeful Rudolph W. Giuliani last night said he would use attrition to cut more than 20 percent of federal civilian government employees and wants an outright cut in nondefense spending.

"The United States government right now needs an across-the-board spending decrease," the former New York mayor told the Heritage Foundation last night.

Coupled with vows to continue the Bush tax cuts and to veto spending bills that include pork-barrel projects without listing their sponsor or purpose, Mr. Giuliani has now gone even further than former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has proposed limiting nondefense discretionary spending increases to 1 percent less than inflation.

Mr. Giuliani said that except for defense spending, which must be increased because the nation is at war, "don't exclude anything" in his across-the-board cuts.

Read the whole story at the link above.

As "Reaganesque" as this sounds - and the Mayor repeatedly invoked the late President's name in his speech - we should remember that even Ronald Reagan never promised to "cut" government spending. His goal was to "cut the rate of increase of discretionary spending" by holding it strictly to the rate of inflation. Reagan wasn't even able to effect that, as he had to allow congressional Democrats to bust the caps on domestic spending in order to obtain funding for restoring the military.

It is fair to say that Giuliani's proposal is the most direct approach to government spending ever by a serious presidential candidate. Others perennially promise to "cut waste," but seldom has even a single program been eliminated - despite mountains of evidence of duplication and lack of effectiveness.

Of course, he would have no chance of getting this proposal enacted unless the GOP recaptures the House in 2008 with a new crop of serious conservatives.