Norquist takes a libertarian viewpoint and wants those running for public office to sign a simple pledge.
One of the signatories to Norquist’s pledge (here is a complete list) is House Majority Leader (R-VA) Eric Cantor, who has lived up to the pledge but not to Norquist’s vision of less government.
Cantor voted for deficit spending to fight wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to start up a new unfunded entitlement program, Medicare Part D, and to support George W. Bush’s TARP legislation to bailout the banking system. Cantor has remained true to his pledge by refusing $1 of revenue increase for every $3 dollars of spending cuts in recent deficit reduction negotiations.
If you're thinking to yourself, "I've never heard of this Grover Norquist fellow," Terry Gross conducted an engaging interview with him in 2003 that started like this:
“Last month, I interviewed Paul Krugman, a columnist for the New York Times and an economic professor at Princeton University. Krugman opposes President Bush’s tax cuts and believes his economic policies could send us into a spiral of fiscal collapse. Krugman said that behind Bush’s economic policies is a plan to deprive the government of revenue so that it’s forced to dismantle most of the federal system that’s been built up since the 1930s. Krugman cited Grover Norquist as being one of the leading architects of the current administration’s policies.”
Norquist's view differed slightly from today's official Republican line. He didn’t argue against taxing wealthy people because they are the “job creators” but because taxing a small group of people based on their income is “the morality of the holocaust.”
When Gross asked a question about what the government would do when the Bush tax cuts left it billions and billions less money to work with, Norquist corrected her by saying “Trillions.”
No comments:
Post a Comment