GOP pledges allegiance to Norquist
September 22, 2011
Mankato Free Press
By Tom Maertens
Before the recent debt ceiling confrontation, most Americans had never heard of Grover Norquist -— which is strange, because he controls the Republican Party.
It is Norquist who coordinates the Republican propaganda campaign with his Wednesday Big Meeting at the old Verizon building in D.C. where some 200 operatives, pundits and propagandists, along with some corporate representatives, work out their media talking points and decide which political opponents to target.
When every Republican who appears on TV repeats talking points such as —We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem — you can be sure it has been crafted by the Norquist crowd.
Those with long memories will recall that we didn’t have a revenue problem or a spending problem under Bill Clinton. He left George W. Bush with a budgetary surplus that the CBO projected would total $5.5 trillion over the next decade.
By the time Bush got done, he left office with an annual deficit of over $1 trillion that the CBO projected would grow to $3 trillion per year by the end of the next decade.
Debt is a future tax obligation, despite the recent nonsense about raising the debt ceiling. When Congress passes a spending bill, they are requiring that revenue eventually be raised to meet the obligation. Anything else is flat-earth economics. In short, George W. Bush cut revenue but left an additional $5.5 trillion tax obligation.
Norquist’s organization is called Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), in reality a special interest group supported by tobacco companies and corporate America.
He began the group in 1986 at the suggestion of Ronald Reagan to press for lower taxes. Subsequently, he has persuaded 95 percent of the Republican members of Congress, all but 13 of 288 legislators, to sign a pledge to — oppose any and all efforts — to raise taxes.
“My ideal citizen is the self-employed, homeschooling, IRA-owning guy with a concealed-carry permit,” Norquist has said, “because that person doesn’t need the goddamn government for anything.”
In Norquist’s primitive world, there would be no transportation and communication infrastructure that the government creates — air traffic, highways, roads, bridges, sewer, water -— there would be no need to keep poisonous substances out of our air, food or water, no need for resolution of property disputes, and the poor and sick would be on their own. Public security and national defense are apparently unnecessary either.
Can we make government more efficient? Of course. But the idea that only the private economy can produce wealth is fiction. The government is part of the mix in a so-called mixed economy, which is how every successful economy in the world operates.
Besides providing the infrastructure, the government, for example, created the Internet and GPS, promoted much of the electronic revolution through the military and space programs, and funds/conducts much of the scientific research and education that drive the economy.
Tax levels are at the lowest they have been since the 50s — particularly for the rich -— yet Republicans talk as if we were suffering a crushing tax burden.
For the top 400 taxpayers, the effective federal income tax rate has dropped from 29 percent in 1993 to 18 percent in 2008. The average adjusted gross income of those 400 households was $271 million. Right now, Forbes’ 400 richest Americans own as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent of the population, yet we somehow shouldn’t tax them.
According to Treasury data, 238,000 households filed returns with adjusted gross incomes of at least $1 million in 2009. One-quarter of them paid an effective federal income tax rate of less than 15 percent and 1,470 paid no federal income tax at all. Soon the upper 1 percent will own more than 50 percent of all wealth and income.
The pledge, which Norquist has been circulating for 25 years, promotes a “nonsensical debate that says we’re not going to talk about spending in the tax code like we talk about other spending,”said Eugene Steuerle, an architect of the 1986 tax overhaul while working in the Reagan Treasury Department.
Spending in the tax code is granted a superior status, and if you get rid of it, it’s called a tax increase. The Washington Post estimated that tax expenditures — subsidies — cost $1.1 trillion per year.
What we have is a radical anti-tax cult with Grover Norquist as its guru. The fact that 95 percent of Republicans have expressed their allegiance to a cult guru rather than their constituents is astonishing, but that is the current Republican Party.
Mankato Free Press
By Tom Maertens
Before the recent debt ceiling confrontation, most Americans had never heard of Grover Norquist -— which is strange, because he controls the Republican Party.
It is Norquist who coordinates the Republican propaganda campaign with his Wednesday Big Meeting at the old Verizon building in D.C. where some 200 operatives, pundits and propagandists, along with some corporate representatives, work out their media talking points and decide which political opponents to target.
When every Republican who appears on TV repeats talking points such as —We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem — you can be sure it has been crafted by the Norquist crowd.
Those with long memories will recall that we didn’t have a revenue problem or a spending problem under Bill Clinton. He left George W. Bush with a budgetary surplus that the CBO projected would total $5.5 trillion over the next decade.
By the time Bush got done, he left office with an annual deficit of over $1 trillion that the CBO projected would grow to $3 trillion per year by the end of the next decade.
Debt is a future tax obligation, despite the recent nonsense about raising the debt ceiling. When Congress passes a spending bill, they are requiring that revenue eventually be raised to meet the obligation. Anything else is flat-earth economics. In short, George W. Bush cut revenue but left an additional $5.5 trillion tax obligation.
Norquist’s organization is called Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), in reality a special interest group supported by tobacco companies and corporate America.
He began the group in 1986 at the suggestion of Ronald Reagan to press for lower taxes. Subsequently, he has persuaded 95 percent of the Republican members of Congress, all but 13 of 288 legislators, to sign a pledge to — oppose any and all efforts — to raise taxes.
“My ideal citizen is the self-employed, homeschooling, IRA-owning guy with a concealed-carry permit,” Norquist has said, “because that person doesn’t need the goddamn government for anything.”
In Norquist’s primitive world, there would be no transportation and communication infrastructure that the government creates — air traffic, highways, roads, bridges, sewer, water -— there would be no need to keep poisonous substances out of our air, food or water, no need for resolution of property disputes, and the poor and sick would be on their own. Public security and national defense are apparently unnecessary either.
Can we make government more efficient? Of course. But the idea that only the private economy can produce wealth is fiction. The government is part of the mix in a so-called mixed economy, which is how every successful economy in the world operates.
Besides providing the infrastructure, the government, for example, created the Internet and GPS, promoted much of the electronic revolution through the military and space programs, and funds/conducts much of the scientific research and education that drive the economy.
Tax levels are at the lowest they have been since the 50s — particularly for the rich -— yet Republicans talk as if we were suffering a crushing tax burden.
For the top 400 taxpayers, the effective federal income tax rate has dropped from 29 percent in 1993 to 18 percent in 2008. The average adjusted gross income of those 400 households was $271 million. Right now, Forbes’ 400 richest Americans own as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent of the population, yet we somehow shouldn’t tax them.
According to Treasury data, 238,000 households filed returns with adjusted gross incomes of at least $1 million in 2009. One-quarter of them paid an effective federal income tax rate of less than 15 percent and 1,470 paid no federal income tax at all. Soon the upper 1 percent will own more than 50 percent of all wealth and income.
The pledge, which Norquist has been circulating for 25 years, promotes a “nonsensical debate that says we’re not going to talk about spending in the tax code like we talk about other spending,”said Eugene Steuerle, an architect of the 1986 tax overhaul while working in the Reagan Treasury Department.
Spending in the tax code is granted a superior status, and if you get rid of it, it’s called a tax increase. The Washington Post estimated that tax expenditures — subsidies — cost $1.1 trillion per year.
What we have is a radical anti-tax cult with Grover Norquist as its guru. The fact that 95 percent of Republicans have expressed their allegiance to a cult guru rather than their constituents is astonishing, but that is the current Republican Party.
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1 Comments:
BEST LINE EVER ABOUT NORQUIST CAME FROM JOHN MCCAIN'S CHIEF OF STAFF MARK SALTER WHEN HE SAID:
''In Norquist's world, the truth is for suckers. And it's as pointless to respond to him as it would be to respond to some street-corner schizophrenic."
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