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The Tax and Spend Spectator
Spend Rifts
A new addition to the Reagan Republican list of non-negotiables.
THE NOVEMBER 2, 2010, ELECTION RESULTS gave America an opportunity to make a U-turn on the Road to Serfdom.
Republicans gained 63 congressmen and six senators in Washington, and nationally won seven governors, more than 680 state legislators, and control of 21 state legislative bodies — all of which will help in redistricting to strengthen the GOP in Congress and the states for the next 10 years.
While these gains are important and encouraging, the most significant change in American politics in 2010 was the introduction of government spending as a vote-moving issue in elections, and Republicans’ acceptance of the issue as a new addition to the Reagan Republican list of non-negotiables.
Prior to the 2009 and 2010 elections, government spending was like the weather — everyone talked about it, but no one did anything about it. Opposition to government spending was rhetorically part of the Reagan Coalition, but operationally it was missing.
The political power of the Reagan Republican coalition flows from vote-moving issues backed up by identifiable political structures that inform and motivate voters. The Second Amendment is powerful because the National Rifle Association has 4 million members and an annual budget of more than $200 million. The tax issue has teeth because Americans for Tax Reform has 235 House members and 41 senators who have signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge to oppose any and all tax hikes. Voters know who has kept or broken the pledge. The life issue is buttressed by the National Right to Life Committee and the Susan B. Anthony List-not debating societies, but real live political machines that move votes. The 2 million Americans who home school are organized and protected by the Home School Legal Defense Association and the Parental Rights Organization.
George W. Bush was very careful never to cross those well-defended lines. But there was no identifiable, organized opposition to growing total government spending. So Bush would cut taxes, and spend too much. Leave your guns alone, and spend too much. Protect life, and spend too much.
The overspending of the Bush years led to some grumbling, but no one threw anything heavy or walked out of the room. If some voters did walk away unhappy about spend-too-much, they did so as unheralded individual voters. There was no recognition in the media or in the halls of power that a voting bloc was breaking off.
The Tea Party movement changed all that in 2010. Now there was a visible, palpable single-issue voting bloc motivated by the size of government. The Tea Party movement had rallies and marches. One could count attendance. They were seen, counted, and felt at the August town hall meetings that solidified the Republican commitment to total opposition to Obamacare and cap and trade energy taxes.
Because the spending issue was front and center, independents who had voted 60/40 against Bush’s party in 2006 and 2008 voted 60/40 for Republican candidates in 2010.
It is clear why the spending issue is a powerful winner for Republicans. If the focus is on reducing government spending as a percentage of the economy there are only two solutions. One: spend less. Two: grow the entire economy so that the same size government is less burdensome. Republicans own both issues.
The Democrats have no ability to compete in a conversation about spending less. All their ideas are about spending more. Stimulus one. Stimulus two. It is harder for Democrats to cut the budget because so much of the government spending over the past 80 years has been structured to create and pay off Democrat constituencies.
Republicans have an entire arsenal of ways to grow the economy. Cut the capital gains tax. Cut income tax rates on individuals and business. Reduce regulation. Throttle the trial lawyers. Expand free trade.
Democrats have no proposals that lead to higher rates of economic growth. They have only their Keynesian theories that government spending creates growth. This failure of ideas is exactly what created the Tea Party movement.
THE DEMOCRATS HAVE ONE HOPE: to fool Republicans into shifting their focus from spending to “the deficit.” The establishment recognizes two “equally valid” ways to reduce the deficit: spend less or tax more. Democrats can do “tax more.” This shift of focus would allow Democrats back on the playing field.
If Democrats fool Republicans into defining the problem as “the deficit” rather than spending, then all bipartisan compromises will contain both tax hikes and spending restraint (incidentally, a fatal mix for the 95 percent of Republicans who have signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge to oppose all tax hikes).
About the Author
Grover G. Norquist is the president of Americans for Tax Reform.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (16) | Leave a comment
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Spoonman| 2.23.11 @ 8:41AM
We, the working people, have to keep the pressure on our representatives and senators to cut, cut, cut federal spending. We cannot allow them to continue increasing taxes or tax rates as that will continue this uncontrollable growth in spending while taking more and more from working folks. Cut spending and reduce taxes and then get out of the way and watch the economy grow.
figusja| 2.23.11 @ 9:55AM
Incumbent Republican senators will fold like paper. They will give president Hussein his money. The small minority in this country (the Liberals, tree huggers, and freeloaders) will get there way. A sad statement but true. They will be responsible for the decline of the greatest country in history. But they will cheer about it.
Petronius| 2.23.11 @ 10:38AM
For the past half century, the real government of this country has been the unelected beltway horsey set which Republicans went to Washington to join. The price of admission to the A list was their votes on the Hill. The TeaParty Republicans aren't welcome but don't care. We elected them to break the establishment and we're just starting. Who wants to belong to a clique with no class anyway?
tatosian| 2.23.11 @ 10:59AM
A Republican hack blaming the Democrats for a situation his party helped bring about.
Er wait, his Republicans were "fooled". Hoodwinked. The inherent goodness of the Republican politician was manipulated and maneuvered into repeated acts of fiscal irresponsibility by the evil, cunning, smarter and stronger Democrats.
What choice did Norquist's Republican Bo Peeps have but to go along to get along?
But this time "the tax issue has teeth because Americans for Tax Reform has 235 House members and 41 senators who have signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge"?
Pigsnot.
Tell it to your beltway banditos you suppurating little rodent.
Oh yeah, before I forget; salam allekum, rat.
steve in ohio| 2.23.11 @ 11:10AM
Grover: We do need to be careful "we don't get fooled again". However, anything Tom Coburn is willing to back needs to be considered. I don't recall the previous deals containing specific cuts like this one does. Maybe the defense cuts will keep the Democrats honest on the welfare cuts. I think the deal will work if we get a provision whereby the tax increases disappear whenever the spending cuts are restored.
steve in ohio| 2.23.11 @ 11:10AM
Grover: We do need to be careful "we don't get fooled again". However, anything Tom Coburn is willing to back needs to be considered. I don't recall the previous deals containing specific cuts like this one does. Maybe the defense cuts will keep the Democrats honest on the welfare cuts. I think the deal will work if we get a provision whereby the tax increases disappear whenever the spending cuts are restored.
Peppermint Tea| 2.23.11 @ 11:16AM
In the past 3 years, hasn't the spending increased by 1 trillion per year, while the taxes have remained approximately the same?
Cut $1 trillion first, then negotiate if you must. But if you cut that much, you probably can
GavInTucson| 2.23.11 @ 11:49PM
I understood where the extra $1T in spending came from in 2009 (Stimulus) but, in the WSJ, I asked where the extra $1T was being spent in FY2010 and FY2011. Curiously nobody chimed in.
Do any of you know? I'm still scratching my head on that one.
LiveFreeOrDie| 2.23.11 @ 11:35AM
Fooled? Hardly.
R or D they have the same disease, corruption. Already the R's are talking about meaningless cuts and attempting to pre-sell them with fingers in the air keeping careful mind of which way the wind is blowing while asking each other, "Is this enough to fool the masses and get re-elected?"
I'll rail against the idiot Dems all day long but when it comes to over spending...pot meet kettle.
The Bruce| 2.23.11 @ 11:29PM
Since the newly elected Republicans have only been in the orifice (D.C.) for less than two months, I think I'll give them a little time to see if they pass things with more teeth.
If they don't, I'll simply take my ball and go home in 2012.
Joe D.| 2.23.11 @ 4:10PM
Grover Norquist, as usual, you along with others are still missing the total boat about the Tea Partiers. It is not just taxes and government spending. It is government control, liberty, social concerns. We need to shrink not just the spending but the control. Most of these agencies are way too big, very unconstitutional and way over their original intended purpose. Good by to EPA, Dept. of Ed, NEA payments, housing and urban dept. - all should go. And Government agencies should shrink or go as well. NO TO OBAMACARE. Again this is government control/liberty.
Matthew Quigley| 2.23.11 @ 5:36PM
Grover: You have totally missed the point of the TEA Party. But that's to be accepted, since the TEA Party also is anti-jihadi and you hang around with jihad types. Allahu FUBAR, jerk. We need you like this country needs Obama.
Timely Renewed | 2.24.11 @ 1:52PM
Spending cuts are good and more would be better, but that is a retail solution to a wholesale problem. The Republicans need to address a much more fundamental failure than getting hoodwinked by the Democrats on taxes. Republican Congresses since the end of World War II have failed to reverse the New Deal Supreme Court's elimination of the Constitution's restraints on federal power. It is these rulings which undergird the massive expansion of the federal government since then. The original constitutional meanings have been so misconstrued and abused by over 70 years of progressive control of the Supreme Court and other branches of the federal government that simple legislative action is not enough. We need to promote amendments to the Constitution to restore its original meaning and structure and lock in this moment of constitutionalist resurgence regardless of the vagaries of political parties.
The first step is to put through an amendment to the amendment process itself which will eliminate the unnecessary convention now required by Article V and permit States to directly initiate amendment proposals. This will break the current de facto federal congressional and judicial monopoly on interpreting the Constitution, and permit grassroots patriots on the state level to restore the Constitution’s original meaning by amendment. This will permanently constrain future federal overreach of the sort rejected by the people last November. See http://www.timelyrenewed.com
Reebok | 8.11.11 @ 2:58AM
is good
العاب | 4.11.12 @ 5:27PM
thank you
very good