Several months ago, I blogged about Bill Weld running for governor of NY. Weld has just thrown down the gauntlet in his race, proposing what could possibly be the most “Free Liberal” proposal to come along in a long time.

Weld -- a native NYer who went to MA for college, stayed, and became governor there -- proposes ending the state income tax for those making under $75,000 per year. He calls that a living wage, which seems a bit high. Still, we are talking about NY, where just subsisting is an expensive proposition.

Weld would “pay for” the tax cuts with offsetting cuts in Medicaid spending. While “progressives” may find this “heartless” on a knee-jerk basis, Weld notes that “New York could save $5 billion a year if it only reduced Medicaid spending to twice the national average. New York now spends more than $40 billion annually on Medicaid, more than any state in the nation.”

In one of the most refreshing political statements in decades, Weld said that "As one who thinks there's no such thing as government money, there's only taxpayers' money, I don't generally start out, when I see a tax cut, thinking how am I possibly going to pay for this," Weld said. "That's looking at it from the point of view of the government ... government doesn't own that money, taxpayers own that money until government takes it away from them in taxes."

Whether Weld gets elected remains a bit of a long shot. The GOP nomination remains contested, and the Dems are likely to nominate noted prosecutor Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer’s comment that upstate NY is like Appalachia exposes what may be the prosecutor’s Achilles Heel: A tin ear. Upstate NYers are leery of their urban, condescending downstate brethren. Whether Weld – a patrician Long Island native – can exploit Spitzer’s condescending manner remains to be seen.

This is no endorsement (we don’t do them), and Weld is not Thomas Jefferson, though he does have red hair. Still, it’s wonderful to see a mainstream candidate taking a free-market position that is – at the same time -- more “progressive” than anything we’ve seen from a Democrat in recent years. This is realpolitik “transpartisanship” at it finest.

-Robert Capozzi