taxes

The Most Powerful Man in Washington You May Have Never Heard Of

May 6 2011

Barack Obama may have the power to unleash the weaponry of the United States outside the United States, but at home he is hamstrung by Congress. The most powerful person inside our borders that we have in mind is a fellow from whose strings dangles just about every Republican Senator and Representative. The one to whom all of them have signed a pledge. An ironclad pledge broken on penalty of his organization’s launching an assault in their home state or district come election time to starve them of funds and see to it that they will never serve in Congress again.

That would be Grover Norquist, who heads Americans for Tax Reform. His mission is and has been for decades (he was appointed to run that organization by George Bush Sr.) to make certain upon their taking office that no Republican Congressperson ever votes for a tax increase of any sort – not even diminishment of a tax deduction. Here is the pledge all are required to sign:

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,

Signed __________________

That’s it. But thus does this unelected Harvard graduate that most Americans have never heard of, except perhaps for his famous desire to reduce government to a size so small that he could "drown it in the bathtub", thus does he rule enough lawmakers in Washington to throttle any contemplation of taxes as one of the remedies to roll back the nation’s colossal debt. He has made tax increases so toxic that Democrats, too, have bought into taxes being loathsome, witness universal agreement on their part that only the top bracket should be increased.

Jaws dropped recently when a letter from Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma to Norquist was made public. Coburn’s sin? As a member of the “Gang of Six”, he was trying to come up with solutions to reduce the national debt, one of which was to do away with the $5 billion annual giveaway to the ethanol industry through the tax code. Coburn had this to say:

Your organization is working to protect an ethanol subsidy the Heritage Foundation and others have called a tax earmark because it is a special interest giveaway targeted to a narrow group of recipients.

By opposing my amendment you are defending wasteful spending and a de facto tax increase on every American. Ethanol subsidies are a spending program wrongly placed in the tax code that increases the burden of government, keeps tax rates artificially high, and forces consumers to pay more for food and energy.

Rather than demanding that Senate conservatives violate their consciences and support distortions in the tax code that increase spending and maintain Washington's power over taxpayer's [sic] lives, your organization should assist our efforts...Continuing to issue blanket defenses of all tax expenditures is a profoundly misguided embrace of progressive, activist government and a strategy for tax complexity, tax deferment, excessive spending and unsustainable deficits.

That’s tellin’ him!

In reaction to this kerfuffle, a letter from Norquist appeared in the New York Times in which he said Coburn "has signed in writing a pledge to the voters of Oklahoma -- not to me". How disingenuous, to put it ever so politely. Did the voters of Oklahoma ask Coburn to sign the pledge?

But now, possibly as indication that Norquist has given other senators marching orders to bring pressure on him, Coburn has suddenly quit the Gang of Six. In an acrimonious session with the group, as if to regain the favor of the extreme right, he made outlandish demands that the group propose $130 billion in reductions to current Medicare recipients, a demand so outlandish that it was guaranteed to be rejected. Out he went. So much for Coburn as hero.

Which returns us to Norquist and the stranglehold he exerts by shutting off an avenue of public policy that must be considered if we are ever to reduce the nation's Brobdingnagian debt. It is reprehensible that Republicans accede to this McCarthy-style loyalty oath. And President Obama is equally to blame for his irresponsible promise not to raise taxes on all but the top brackets. Why? Because he made that promise on the campaign trail, before knowing the state of the union in all its complexity, thus putting his winning the election before the security of the country.

We say this not because we necessarily want taxes to rise, but because it is the responsibility of all elected officials not to make ironclad pledges before the fact, before knowing what the nation may face. And the country now faces enormous challenges and huge debts to foreign countries that could bankrupt us.

Your representatives in Congress must keep all options open and certainly owe no fealty to Grover Norquist. Let your Congressman know that his or her cowardice is disgraceful, that they owe their loyalty to you, not some an absolutist martinet on K Street.

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