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The Tax and Spend Spectator
Spend Rifts
A new addition to the Reagan Republican list of non-negotiables.
(Page 2 of 2)
Can Obama fool the Republicans into abandoning the political high ground of fighting for less spending? It has happened before.
In 1982, Democrats talked Ronald Reagan into a bipartisan compromise to cut spending three dollars for every dollar of tax increases. Taxes were raised by a total of $215 billion in the following five years. According to the terms of the deal, spending should have been reduced by three times that much: $645 billion. Instead, adjusting for inflation, total spending rose by $177 billion more than it would have without the deficit reduction agreement. In other words, a promised cut of $647 billion turned into a spending hike of $177 billion. (Republicans then lost House seats in the fall election.)
In 1990, Democrats lured George Herbert Walker Bush into an ambush at Andrews Air Force Base where he was promised two (not three) dollars of spending cuts for every dollar of tax increases he conceded (he was a cheaper date). Tax rates were hiked. Twenty-six different tax hikes were permanently imposed that increased taxes over the following five years by $137 billion. The Democrats’ promise would suggest spending cuts of $274 billion. Instead, spending rose $23 billion more than the projected baseline (and Bush won only 38 percent of the presidential vote two years later).
Obama has studied under the great political strategist Lucy, who teaches that if Charlie Brown has fallen for the I’ll-hold-the-football trick in the past, he will do so again.
LAST YEAR OBAMA CREATED another deficit commission headed by Clinton operative Erskine Bowles and former Wyoming senator and Reliably Reasonable Republican Alan Simpson. They released a “compromise” to cut spending by four (not three or two) dollars for every dollar of tax increase. They claim their plan cuts spending by 3 trillion dollars and raises taxes by 1 trillion dollars over the next decade. Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), who served on the commission and voted against the plan, argues that the plan really raises taxes by 2 trillion dollars. The Heritage Foundation calculates at least 3 trillion in higher taxes. And on the spending side? Americans for Tax Reform polled every Democratic congressman and senator, asking if they would support the supposed spending cuts in the proposal. None would.
Yet Charlie Brown lives and learned nothing. Two Republican senators did vote for the Obama commission’s plan to raise taxes by 2 or 3 trillion dollars in return for promises on spending. Neither were in Congress in 1982 or 1990 to watch the “disappearing spending cut” trick performed live.
Tax hikes are not part of a deficit reduction solution. Spending cuts and pro-growth tax cuts reduce the deficit. Tax hikes are what politicians do in place of spending reduction. Tax hikes only enable more spending.
Nor are spending-only plans somehow unattainable. For instance, New Jersey governor Chris Christie removed $2.6 billion dollars from the Democratic legislature’s budget, but only by refusing to consider any tax increases.
There are cheerful signs relating to the current deficit commission. Boehner and McConnell have learned the lessons of 1982 and 1990. After the Tea Party election of November 2010, they led their caucuses to kill the earmark-laden omnibus bill in December, banned future earmarks, and stopped the Democrats’ planned tax hike by extending the lower rates established in 2001 and 2003 under Bush.
But the Washington establishment has great rewards for politicians who “grow in office” — who abandon their written commitments to voters to oppose tax increases and who abandon spending discipline for bipartisan talks on so-called deficit reduction.
The Sirens of bipartisan agreements to reduce the deficit (rather than spending) remain. So do the rocks.
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