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Politics
Pledge Allegiance
Thanks to the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, “taxes are off the table” — and the president can’t stand it.
IN 1986, the taxpayer Protection Pledge was created. The pledge is a written and signed commitment from a candidate for office to his constituents, guaranteeing that the candidate will oppose and vote against any net tax increase.
Twenty-five years later, on August 2, 2011, the pledge stopped President Obama in his tracks.
Obama and congressional Democrats had a plan. They would turn the United States into a European welfare state. Something between Bismarck’s Prussia and modern-day Greece.
But federal spending in the United States had averaged “only” 20 percent of economic output, or Gross Domestic Product (GDP), for the last 40 years. State and local spending added another 10 or 12 percent. To get a really good social welfare state going and make citizens permanently dependent on the state requires spending approaching 52.8 percent of the economy, as in France, or Greece’s 46.8 percent, Sweden’s 52.5 percent, or even Britain’s 47.3 percent.
How to get from here to there?
Democrats were counting on Republicans reverting to type and in a fit of “bipartisanship” and “fiscal responsibility,” once again playing the role Jack Kemp mocked in the 1960s and 1970s — “the tax collectors for the welfare state.”
Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi used the economic crisis created by the selfless bureaucrats at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to dramatically ramp up federal spending. The $800 billion stimulus. A trillion in additional domestic discretionary spending. TARP, part two — another $350 billion. And Obamacare.
Federal spending rose from $2.9 trillion in 2008 to $3.8 trillion in 2011. In the first three years of Team Obama, federal debt rose by $4 trillion. The 2011 deficit was $1.414 trillion, and Obama’s 2011 budget projected a total debt increase of $10.4 trillion over the next decade.
Surely, the Republican Party would do the responsible thing and raise taxes to reduce the deficit. They had always done so in the past. In 1982, Democrats convinced Ronald Reagan to sign a deal that promised to cut spending by three dollars for every dollar of tax increases. In the following five years, taxes would be increased by $215 billion and spending was promised to be reduced by $645 billion. Adjusted for inflation, however, spending actually increased $177 billion above what it would have absent the deal — Reagan had been tricked.
Eight years later, then-president George H. W. Bush was promised two (not three) dollars in spending cuts for every dollar of tax increases (he was a cheaper date). The top tax rate was increased from 28 percent to 31 percent. Taxes were hiked by $137 billion over the next five years, but once again the promised spending reduction of $274 billion melted away. Spending actually increased $23 billion above pre-deal projections.
The Republican learning curve did not appear to be very steep.
But 20 years later, the Republican Party that Obama ran into, led by Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), was very different.
Why?
IN 1986, AMERICANS for Tax Reform offered the Taxpayer Protection Pledge to all congressional candidates of both parties. During the campaign, Reagan endorsed the pledge in speeches, and campaigned for candidates who signed it. That November, 100 House members and 20 senators were elected, all of whom had made the written commitment to voters not to raise taxes. All were Republicans — except Tom Daschle, who won an upset victory in South Dakota when the Wall Street Journal editorial page highlighted the fact that he had signed the pledge while the Republican incumbent, James Abdnor, had balked.
In 1988, every single Republican running for president signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge — except Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole. During the New Hampshire debate just before the nation’s first primary, Governor Pete du Pont explained that all the other candidates had signed the pledge and challenged Dole to do so also, offering the pledge to Dole, who visibly recoiled, as if a vampire being tossed a cross. Dole subsequently lost New Hampshire.
About the Author
Grover G. Norquist is the president of Americans for Tax Reform.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (23) | Leave a comment
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Pat Spooner| 10.4.11 @ 8:37AM
Please identify the six House Republicans and seven Senate Republicans who failed to sign the Pledge! People need to know so that these folks can either be convinced to sign it or defeated in primaries and replaced with solid anti-tax candidates.
Matthew Quigley| 10.4.11 @ 8:56AM
Hah! I wouldn't sign ANYTHING Norquist laid out! The fine print probably has the shahada in it and a promise to support anything that is pro-jihadi!
Why does AmSpec still give this stealth-jihadi/dhimmi a forum? He has NO credibility!
loulou| 10.4.11 @ 10:14AM
This is precisely the reason I let my TAS subscription lapse: Grover the Jihadi Norquist. I don't care what he thinks about taxes. Do they think we're stoopid?!
Buck Ofama| 10.4.11 @ 6:17PM
>Do they think we're stoopid?!
A small majority stoopidly elected Ovomit.
PolishKnight| 10.4.11 @ 10:29AM
"The only American who smokes and earns more than $250,000 is named Barack Obama.)"
Actually, Hollywood is full of smokers. One of my favorite actors, Michael Douglas, was shown puffing away days after beating lung cancer along with Catherine Zeta-Jones. Hollywood films glamorize smoking almost as much as during the 1940's.
Al Adab| 10.4.11 @ 12:03PM
PK, you miss it. It depends on what one is smoking. After all we demonize tobacco but want to make that other stuff legal. Think of all the future ADHD kids we can get on health care rolls that way. If hypocricy were oil this place would be Saudi Arabia.
Clint| 10.4.11 @ 10:59AM
"Taxpayer Protection Pledge
I, _______________, pledge to the taxpayers of the _____ district
of the state of__________, and to the American people that I will:
ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax
rates for individuals and/or businesses; and
TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and
credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates. "
irish19| 10.4.11 @ 11:23AM
Is that the actual language of the pledge? Cool.
Lee Ghume| 10.4.11 @ 11:29AM
That is something Clint made up , the language is too simple to have been written by lawyers.
Clint| 10.4.11 @ 1:12PM
Yup, irish.
That's the actual American For Tax Reform Pledge for House Members.
irish19| 10.5.11 @ 12:34AM
Cool. Although Lee has a point about the language being way too simple for lawyers. Simple is better. Less wiggle room. I would hazard a guess AFTR isn't made up of lawyers.
Zbigniew Mazurak| 10.4.11 @ 11:43AM
Hahaha, Norquist still defending tax breaks for various special interest groups and companies. Pathetic.
Clint| 10.4.11 @ 1:14PM
Tax Reform trumps these Israel Firsters' Agenda.
Matthew Quigley| 10.4.11 @ 10:21PM
I guess you're a jihad-firster. You must be, since you back al-Norquist.
Schmuck.
Joe D.| 10.4.11 @ 1:28PM
We also, need to get the public thinking changing as well. Government is not the answer but the problem. It needs to shrink not just in spending but the things they get themselves involved in. Until that thinking is changed we will continue to have this problem as well. They are not to do for the public what the public can and should do for themselves.
Bernard Lindstrom| 10.4.11 @ 1:56PM
Yeah isn't that great? No new taxes! But even MORE military and social spending! Which means we will be going further and further into debt! And it means we will push off paying for our lifestyles onto our children and grandchildren, like the country full of irresponsible half-men that we are!
Fantastic!
TrueBlue| 10.4.11 @ 3:51PM
You do not fix a spending problem by increasing taxes. What is so hard to understand about that? If you have a spending problem, it doesn't matter how much you make, you will still have a spending problem! Cut spending to the point that the government actually takes in a surplus in tax revenue every year, and the debt will pay itself off.
Pat| 10.4.11 @ 4:44PM
If you don’t pay taxes then a promise not to raise your taxes is right up there with promising not to give oil rich Saudi Arabia millions more in foreign aid. Too many Americans are into give me something I don’t have to pay for and you got my vote. Which is probably why we need to raise taxes on gobs of Americans besides our favorite billionaire, Warren Buffet.
The solemn pledge should be reworded as: “I plan to do pretty much of nothing if elected – no new government programs, no more stimulus plans, no more wars in countries where they keep the family goats in their living room and we’re going to be ordering off the McDonald’s value menu at all future state dinners”. “I wanna be like Ike” should be our next president’s motto – plenty of golf outings, long afternoon naps, leave the female interns alone and watch sports in the Oval Office whenever possible.
If we let the country heal, it probably will – but we won’t because too many Americans are wack jobs who like a little excitement in their daily politics. A quiet 4 years starting in 2013 isn’t on the agenda whether we get rid of Obama or not.
The media won’t stand for a season of healing, the poor, the homeless, the illegal immigrants, the warming up climate – your neighbor’s dog barking each and every night is less of a constant irritant and opinion polls show the majority of Americans would rather have a registered sex offender living on their block than see a mainstream media employee moving in. Even lawyers are telling “reporter” jokes now and dumping valium into our nation’s water supply is the only remaining option to get our media to “shut the f*ck up” and leave us in peace.
irish19| 10.5.11 @ 12:36AM
LOL!
Funny, but sensible. I especially like the one about lawyers telling reporter jokes.
POST American| 10.4.11 @ 11:34PM
"----We are going into a long planned,
carefully engineered, transition into an
authoritarian world system. Come up
with long ago by world banking elites.
After having created the wasteful, degraded
CON--Sumer culture, kept stocked by all
those slave goods from RED China --they're
now bringing in their favorite management
device ---'AWE---STARE---IT---HE' and
----'SSS---US---stain---a---bill---IT---he'
---surpervised through a full spectrum
POLICE STATE."
Know your 'bennie factors'.
Recognize the 'benny violence'.
"--And be aware, in this new 'system',
there's NO complaints department.'
-------THAT'S RIGHT KIDDIES!
-----------FUKISHIMA and MASS INJECTIONS
--------------YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
irish19| 10.5.11 @ 12:37AM
And that's the way it is.........................in the Twilight Zone.
EMG| 10.10.11 @ 8:17PM
"Elected Republicans who vote for tax increases are rat heads in a Coke bottle"
I laughed out loud. But, Mr. Norquist, I hear rumors about your dhimmi-status... what's up with that?