How Party of Budget Restraint Shifted to ‘No New Taxes,’ Ever
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM, NYT
WASHINGTON — On a Saturday afternoon in October 1990, Senator Pete V. Domenici turned from a conversation on the Senate floor, caught the eye of a clerk by raising his right hand and voted in favor of a huge and contentious bill to reduce federal deficits. Then he put his hand back into his pocket and returned to the conversation.
It was the end of an era, although no one knew it then. It was the last time any Congressional Republican has voted for higher income taxes.
The conservative revolt against that 1990 legislation — and against President George Bush, who violated his own “Read my lips” vow not to increase taxes — was a seminal moment for Republicans. The party of balanced budgets became the party that opposed tax increases.
When conservatives sank Speaker John A. Boehner’s plan last week to acquiesce on tax increases for the most affluent Americans as part of a potential broader deal with the Obama administration to avert tax increases for everyone else, several said that 1990 accord was a reason. They regard Mr. Bush’s broken promise as a major reason he was not re-elected, and they say the budget agreement proved that such compromises do not restrain the growth of government.
(More here.)
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2 Comments:
Tax now, save later only works in left side of the aisle fairy tales.
Is there a better example of "NO Taxes Ever" than the Sportsmen's Act of 2012 ?
CBO says it will decrease the deficit by $5 million and has the support of hunting and fishing groups who would receive public access to public land ... but it got killed because it raised of the cost of a federal duck stamp from $15 to $25.
As explained in Outdoor Life : the $10 increase violated a provision from 2011 that was supposed to prevent fee increases. Forget that those of us who buy the duck stamp do it gladly and voluntarily, and know that at $15, it hasn’t kept up with the rate of inflation. It was time to raise the cost of the stamp. But the no-new-taxes faction of the Congress used it as their lever to kill the entire Sportsmen’s Act, which would have been the biggest public-lands bill in a generation. The sad fact is that most Republicans are still smarting over the re-election of the bill’s sponsor, Montana Sen. Jon Tester.
Just like the Medical Device Tax which is an excise tax that will be paid ultimately by the user, Members of Congress can play to their "NO Taxes" constituents that they will fight against taxes even when it benefits outweigh the costs.
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