Since the Super Committee failed to come up with the promised $1.2 trillion in pretend deficit reduction over the next decade, many in the nation’s capital blame Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist.
Our taxes — and even the taxes of people with the nerve to be wealthy — are not being increased. This, you must understand, is all Grover’s doing, the fault of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge he “pushed” on more than 275 members of Congress.
His pledge articulates a simple, straightforward idea: Taxes are too high and politicians should stop increasing them. Incumbent politicians appear fearful of breaking this pledge. If they go back on their word, they risk being defeated come the next election.
Last Sunday, 60 Minutes’ correspondent Steve Kroft blurted out to Norquist, “You’ve got them by the short hairs!”
Norquist responded, “The voters do, yeah.”
Are we really supposed to be sad about the system of accountability known as elections?
Former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson whined that Norquist “may well be the most powerful man in America today.”
“The tax issue is the most powerful issue in American politics going back to the Tea Party,” Norquist explained.
If you think the federal government is too small and does too little, a pledge not to raise taxes makes scant sense. But if you think, like Norquist, that government is a whole lot bigger than it should be, pledging not to make it bigger still is a no-brainer.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “Many Thanks to Grover”
Great efforts on the part of Mr. Norquist, but his is a reaction mode, putting out fires fomented by a corrupted Congress and a corrupting system.
This is as interesting plan by Randy E. Barnett, that he had published as a column in Forbes, that details how we, as a country can take power back from DC and give it back to the states and the people BEFORE the next election.
http://www.ranger-forums.com/showthread.php?t=86739
Might even save the country.
[…] they say. All members of the Kansas Congressional Delegation except Kevin Yoder signed the pledge. Paul Jacob is thankful for Norquist and that a tax increase was […]
What is it, I wonder — for the half of the electorate that’s too damned stupid to know it’s lied to and/or is too damned mean-spirited and/or greedy to care — that’s difficult to grasp about the simple fact a vote to increase taxation is a vote to OK increased spending, is a vote to automatically increase the deficit — and to grow the feral gummint’s indebtedness?
Oh to rid our beloved fraternal republic of those that would also grow Mob Rule.
Or, as they prefer we call it: “democracy!”
[…] they say. All members of the Kansas Congressional Delegation except Kevin Yoder signed the pledge. Paul Jacob is thankful for Norquist and that a tax increase was […]