Grover Norquist, President, Americans For Tax Reform
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Grover Norquist is President of Americans for Tax Reform and author of the book Leave Us Alone -- Getting the Government's Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives. ATR is a coalition of taxpayer groups, individuals and businesses opposed to higher taxes at both the federal, state and local levels. ATR organizes the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, which asks all candidates for federal and state office to commit themselves in writing to oppose all tax increases. To date, President George W. Bush, 193 House members, and 41 Senators have taken the pledge. On the state level, 7 governors and 1,221 state legislators have taken the pledge.
Norquist also serves on the board of directors of the National Rifle Association of America, serves on the board of directors of the American Conservative Union, serves as a Contributing Editor to the American Spectator Magazine and serves as president of the American Society of Competitiveness. He wrote the book "Rock the House" - an analysis of the 1994 elections.
In the past, Norquist served as a commissioner on the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce, a commissioner on the National Commission on Restructuring the Internal Revenue Service, and an economist and chief speech-writer, U.S. Chamber of Commerce (1983-1984). He was executive director of the National Taxpayers' Union and the College Republicans.
Wage and price controls are not a new idea. They are a very old idea with a consistent history of creating more problems than they solve. There has always been a stain of thinking among those men and women who consider themselves wiser than the market to believe that they know the value of a product or service. The only real value is what men and women freely choose to pay in a free market. Everything else is a power play by special interests and the government bureaucrats that serve them. The men and women who lost billions… Read more
The federal government is spending more than it planned to—more even than the high spending Bush administration spent. Some states are spending less than they planned to. Will the second cancel out the first? This makes sense only if one believes in Keynesianism—the idea that the government taking a dollar away from you through taxes or debt and spending that dollar creates more jobs and wealth and national income than you spending the dollar you earned. Somehow, if this theory worked in the real world the nice people of Zimbabwe would be rich and folks would flee… Read more
If the stock market is signaling a possible recovery the question is why? What changed. The “stimulus spending” bill was passed in February and employment and the stock market fell. What has changed in the past two months is the political health and clout of the Obama administration. It is now less likely that taxes will be placed on energy in “Cap and Trade” and less likely that grave damage will be done to the drug industry. This is good news for the economy and the market has risen as a result. This is what happened back in… Read more
Greg Mankiw points out that passing legislation to take $787 billion dollars from people who earned it--in debt or taxes--and giving to it politically favored groups damages the overall economy, reduces investment and kills job creation. This should be a surprise to no one. If the State spending other people's money could increase employment and wealth and growth, then Zimbabwe would be prospering. East Germany would have worked and the Great Depression would not have lasted more than a decade. Imagine if Obama, Reid and Pelosi all stood on one side of a lake and dipped in three buckets and… Read more
There is every reason to believe that Obama is doing what Hoover and Roosevelt did---turn a recession into a decades-long depression by deciding to “fix things.” Hoover and Roosevelt both raised income taxes. Obama schedules income taxes to rise at the end of 2010. Hoover engaged in protectionism. Obama and his congressional Democrats have already delayed or scuttled four free trade agreements and labor unions claim Obama has promised to continue this policy. Massive spending by the federal government began under Hoover accelerated under Roosevelt and Obama makes them both look frugal. Hoover and Roosevelt and Obama threatened and imposed… Read more
Fiscal sustainability means moving from defined benefit/pay as you go/ Ponzi sheme financing of Social Security and Medicare to fully funded defined contribution pensions and health care funding. This is not just a government funding problem. Private companies that have defined benefit pensions have found themselves uncompetitive compared to defined contribution pensions. There are no unfunded liabilities in a defined contribution pension system—i.e. 401ks or Individual Retirement Accounts. The savings for retirement is done up front and each individual is responsible for his or her own retirement. Pay as you go/defined benefit plans have your children taxed (or their… Read more
We don't know if job losses peaked. Employers are still waiting to see what will happen. If the Democrats get 60 votes for "card check" to end private ballots for unionization (and that also has a number of other less well publicized poison pills) then new hires will be delayed or avoided. Has the spending spree ended? Will Obama's vision of health care reform ration health care as his European models do? Then watch employment in health care drop further. Will Obama try and reduce the cost of health care by lowering the value of pharmaceutical patents...then new efforts for… Read more
Normal 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} What can/should the Obama administration do with tax reform? To begin with, tax reform--like campaign finance reform or labor law reform-- means very different things to different people. I want federal taxes to be lower. The modern Democrat party wants them higher. Calling a tax hike, "reform" doesn't make it reform. What will Obama/Reid and Pelosi do? They will try to jam higher taxes through under… Read more
When you are in a hole: stop digging. Former Senator George Aiken of Vermont had a suggestion concerning the slightly less expensive project known as the Vietnam War: declare victory and quit. It would have been wiser and less expensive to let failing banks fail and solvent banks get on with life $700 billion ago. But better late than never. All this flailing around by the Obama administration is making things worse, delaying a recovery. Updated at 10:22 a.m. on April 27.… Read more
The Reid/Pelosi/Obama economic plan is to empower trial lawyers to sue more often, spending a 800 billion on earmarks rejected by previous congresses, funding 9000 more earmarks, raising taxes on income, investments, dividends, capital gains and exporters, eliminating pesky elections that hamper the Teamster’s organizing drives, sending tens of thousands more American troops to Afghanistan (Iraq without the flat bits), subsidizing those banks that wasted the most of their depositors money, and increasing the power of Washington DC. This, they predict will create economic growth. Each of these projects have been tried by other nations… Read more
Taking $800 billion out of the productive economy through higher taxes and/or higher levels of debt and spending that money in places chosen by politicians will make America poorer, reduce the total number of jobs, lower incomes and slow economic growth compared to doing nothing. If congress forceably takes money out of the economy and puts it back in based on political decisions it will make us poorer and kill jobs. What to do as an encore? Go to confession. Ask for forgiveness. Claim you were drinking heavily. Plead temporary Insanity. All these would… Read more
For a politician from Chicago this must seem like someone left the bank vault open. Government control of the banks? All loans made on a political basis? The opportunitities for graft and corruption are endless. We have been here before....and this did turn out rather badly when the federal government nationalized part of the banks portfolios with the Community Reinvestment Act that told banks to make loans the politicians demanded. Heck, we will just bankrupt the banks as Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and Rahm Emmanuel did with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...and then we blame the private sector for the… Read more
Our target should simply be to keep the dollars value constant compared to a basket of goods. in the old days that was simply gold. That is a better bet than letting Greenspan "do his thing", but a basket of goods including gold might be more stable.… Read more
Mr. Neel Kashkari Interim Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability U.S. Department of the Treasury 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20220 Dear Secretary Kashkari: I write today to formally request $700 billion from the TARP Capital Purchase Program. Since unionized auto companies, state and local governments, and certain credit card companies are applying, I thought I should, as well. Attached you will find the two-page application which I downloaded from www.treas.gov. I am fully aware that some $125 billion has already been allocated as of October 29, 2008. However, given that the federal government has the full weight of the… Read more
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